“I’m really sad that it happened again,” Yasmin said in a low voice. “He accused me of looking at other guys in the café when I wasn’t. But when he ogles women and I get upset he flies off the handle and tells me I expect too much and should back off.”
Dashed expectations were a feature of 37-year-old Yasmin’s life. She was on her 12th relationship since she first started dating. Each time she felt let down, used and made a fool of. Yet she insisted in believing in the perfect relationship. She was convinced she was owed it and should have the right to enjoy.
She was afraid of getting too old to settle and have a family – the family she never had growing up. Working as a social media agent for a pet food industry she felt like she was serving someone else, as usual.
When was it going to be her turn to be served?
Enrico, a 34-year-old fitness trainer was the latest hope in Yasmin’s life. His smile when they met in the gym; his attentiveness and sex appeal captivated her, pressing all the buttons that kept her believing in the perfect relationship.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: rescuing the loved figure and being loved and cared for in return
Growing up as the eldest of two siblings, Yasmin was expected to take care of her mother who slipped in and out of alcoholic binges. She had long since driven her husband away, choosing to be wedded to the booze. Yasmin was left with the responsibility for keeping her mother afloat just to ensure that she and her sister Olive had a parent.
Rescuing her mother from the dependency on alcohol meant transferring the dependency onto Yasmin. She was going to cure her mother of needing alcohol to needing Yasmin instead, thereby becoming a sober, dutiful and proper parent.
That’s when the image of an idealized parental figure formed in Yasmin’s mind. The perfect parent would put her and Olive first; make them meals, be interested in their schooling, foster social connections and offer stability and security so that Yasmin could trust in unconditional love.
When Yasim took on the parenting role towards her mother, she was rewarded with affection, adulation and promises of future gratitude through adoration – for short bursts of time. She got a taste of what life could be like if she just stuck it out long enough for her mother to become a real mother. What’s not to like about that?
Her devotion and sense of responsibility would ‘make’ her mother sober and want to be the parent her daughters had been deprived of. These were the seeds of Yasmin insisting in believing in the perfect relationship.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: developing the notion of an ideal loving figure
Yasmin used this ideal mother figure to help her get through her early life of sacrifice and missed childhood. She focused on the idealized mother she had created in her inner world – the one that showered her with affection, became her best friend and made her feel special when Yasmin nursed her through her hangovers.
That mother who was adoring and caring was split off from the mother who was ‘out of it’ when she used all her money to maintain her habit, leaving Yasmin to go to neighbors for food. Keeping the idealized mother as the one she was going to earn for her rescuing behavior helped Yasmin avert the anxiety of feeling helpless, unlovable and fall apart.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: compulsion to repeat childhood attachment dynamics with adult romantic partners
The realization that her mother would never be the mother she yearned for was likely to destroy Yasmin and make her give up – perhaps go on the booze herself! In order to avoid that, she had to keep the illusion of that idealized parent figure alive in her inner world. She did this by removing her investment chips from her mother and placing them on successive romantic partners.
She was drawn to attractive men who easily seduced her into believing that she was special, and worth giving everyone else up for. She fell into the familiar role of being loyal, available and loving, as she soaked in what she thought was genuine deep intimate and lasting connection with her partner. For short periods of time she enjoyed idyllic ecstatic sexual and emotional experiences with each partner, until the moment she felt trapped.
Dear Reader, does this remind you of anything? Yes, the same wonderful experiences when mom was sober and slathering all over Yasmin, before she retreated to the booze, leaving Yasmin feeling trapped in the relationship, having to be the caretaker, waiting for the next reprieve from alcohol when she could have her mom back as a ‘real’ mom.
Yasmin was caught in a compulsion to repeat the same pattern, getting all the highs, followed by the dejecting lows that made her angry – yet more desperate to prove that she could make her romantic partner a permanent loving, caring and adoring person – to match her ideal – insisting on believing in the perfect relationship. Just as her mother was addicted to alcohol, Yasmin was addicted to the highs she got from being made to feel special and more desirable than anyone else. The insistence on believing in the perfect relationship was strengthened by the intermittent reinforcement (the most powerful kind) of small unpredictable highs, followed by long dejected lows.
She got angry with herself when it didn’t work, tried even harder to keep her partner in the adoring mode, before feeling choked and needing to get out of this trap by ending the relationship.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: a narcissistic entanglement to defend against the horror of feeling flawed and unlovable
Enrico was more mature than her previous partners. He initiated contact, making her feel special. He responded to her and seemed as excited as she was to spend time together. Most of all he seemed interested in her, being curious without judgement. Yasmin didn’t have to work at this relationship – it was coming to her. She sensed that Enrico’s strong feelings and need for her was genuine. He was filling up the hole where all her unmet childhood needs were waiting to be attended to. Her insistence on believing in the perfect partner was being fed, and reinforced big time.
But in time, Enrico appeared more selfish and demanding (just like Yasmin’s mother when she was back on the booze). It was hard for Yasmin to keep up the image of that perfect loving figure. She made excuses for Enrico and tried to seduce him back to the way he was by turning herself into an indispensable object to serve his needs.
To ensure the existence of believing in a perfect relationship, Yasmin got further entangled with Enrico. There were no boundaries, or limits. It was if he was an extension of her and was expected to behave accordingly. By keeping him as an ideal perfect lover, she protected herself from feeling anything other than perfect too. This ‘narcissistic entanglement’ allowed Yasmin to shield Enrico from being a human with flaws; have needs separate from hers, and or have a different appetite for her than she had for him. Because if he had flaws that would mean she had too, and that would be unbearable.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: a necessary illusion to avoid true intimacy, revealing the flaws in both that make them lovable
Yasmin was caught in a bind. If she didn’t keep up the illusion of an ideal partner she would have to face the reality that her attachment figures didn’t want to be attached to her – that she was not good enough, sufficiently alluring or worth emotionally investing in.
While Enrico was making her feel special she felt stable and hopeful, but because it was an illusion it became a barrier to intimacy. Since Yasmin experienced him as an extension of herself when he was filling her unmet needs, she never got to know who he was and how his childhood traumas led him to use her for his unmet needs. Therefore there could never be any true emotional intimacy between them. That would require seeing each other flawed and all, giving up their idealized images – leading to a failed relationship.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: cycles of idealization and devaluation
Both Enrico and Yasmin were trapped in a mutual cycle of idealization – devaluation that reflected their highs and lows, gripping them in a vice where they avoided facing their wounds, using one another to maintain the illusion of healing.
Enrico had been thrown out of his home as a young teen by an abusive step-father, and was deeply hurt by his mother who never protected him, choosing her husband over her son. So when Yasmin came along and made him feel that he was her world, wow did that satisfy his unmet childhood needs!
Enrico projected his ideal mom into Yasmin, and she projected her ideal parent onto Enrico. They acted these roles out with the same patterns that had wounded them in childhood. It was as if these two puzzle parts had been glued together and couldn’t be split apart because doing so would have exposed their raw and frazzled edges. Both experienced the other as ideal when they were locked in the bliss of mutual adoration. Both were also locked into the depths of devaluation of themselves and the other when the ideal fell off the pedestal. Both saw each other as all good or all bad, making a realistic adult romantic relationship impossible.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: choosing a mirror image of herself resulted in permanent insecurity
Enrico didn’t want to be swallowed up by Yasmin and her insatiable need to be special. He needed to feel special as well, to compensate for his mother choosing his step-father over him.
Yasmin didn’t want to have to be proving herself the whole time. She wanted to seen as worth loving because she took care of Enrico’s needs.
Both wanted to be unconditionally loved for who they were – not for their driven performative behaviors. Both had similar wounds which they took turns in soothing unconsciously. Both wanted the ideal parenting figure but neither could give it permanently because both were really wounded kids putting on the cloak of parenthood. Their tragic attempt at a romantic relationship was bound to be fraught with anxiety, disappointment, and fear of not being special. The highs and lows provided a kind of ‘holding environment’ where both could preserve the fantasy of meeting their idealized parent who would act out the idealizations in a super-human way.
Insisting on believing in the perfect relationship: coming down to earth
At the age of 43 Yasmin decided to attend therapy. Friends and colleagues had gotten married and started families. She had been scared of time running out, but now she was terrified. She had harvested and frozen her eggs, keeping hope alive.
In her individual therapy it was obvious that Yasmin was disguising her depression by focusing on her work challenges when her customers were too demanding and not wanting to pay the contracted fee. She was always with others in social settings to avoid feeling alone and unwanted. But once she felt safe enough in therapy to talk about what she really wanted and wasn’t getting from her string of partners, (Enrico being the latest), the pattern became clear.
When it was pointed out that she was repeating the same patterns of highs and lows with partners that had existed in childhood, she was furious. She felt blamed and criticized, unwilling to face reality, insisting on believing in the perfect relationship.
Worn down with her suffering and unable to shield herself any longer from reality, Yasmin saw the patterns and vowed to be more aware and not repeat the destructive cycles. It was easier said than done, because while she accepted it intellectually, it wasn’t so easy to give it up emotionally – until her unmet childhood needs were attented to in the therapeutic relationship. Once Yasmin began to be filled up with a stable and reliable diet of love, understanding and care, she was able to sample reality with less dread. She began the grieving process while held tightly in therapy and despite being angry about having to admit flaws, she was able to tolerate seeing the real person rather than an idealized one.
This process was long, hard, often painful but worth enduring. Yasmin now has a strong partnership not with some sexy hunk, but a real man who is there for her and she for him – not wound to wound, but man to woman in a healthy intimate connection.
© Jeanette Raymond, Ph.D. 2026
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