Is there such a thing as too much romanticizing?

Dispatches from the city of love

Ahead of our trip to Paris, I made a mental list of all of the things I wanted to do with Ben while I was there: Visit the fleas, wander around the Left Bank, climb to the top of the steps of the Sacré-Coeur after sunset and catch the twinkle of the Eiffel Tower. I wanted so desperately to show him the nooks and crannies of this city that means so much to me — to try and recreate what I’d felt all the times I’d been there before. I booked reservations. I planned a day trip to Versailles, which he’d never been to, and researched the best places for long lunches and apéro and vintage shopping. I had a perfect plan…so it should come as no surprise that, at certain parts of the trip, I found myself feeling disappointed.

Looking back on it now, from my desk in our Brooklyn apartment, I can see how silly that feeling was. We had, and I say this with my chest, an incredible time. We wandered the entire city, clocking over 40k steps on our last day. We sat outside with a cigarette and a cigar, enjoying a drink and picking charcuterie off a planche. We sipped mulled wine as we wandered the gardens of Versailles, shopped, and visited museums, and rang in the new year with our good friends. We listened to a chamber orchestra play Strauss at Saint-Suplice, completely by accident, and lit candles for our loved ones as “The Blue Danube” echoed through the church.

For the past year, I have been trying to learn to be more present in the current moment — and I’ve taken plenty of steps to try to internalize that lesson. One of the biggest changes that I’ve made, on the advice of my therapist, is to turn off all of the notifications on my phone. I don’t get notified when people text me, or when someone likes an Instagram post, or when my Uber Eats delivery was picked up. The only time my phone buzzes is for phone calls, which I have informed those close to me is the best way to get in touch with me these days.

And it has helped in a lot of ways. I don’t even know where my phone is half the time anymore. My imposture syndrome? All but flown the coop, along with my FOMO. So I’ve gotten a handle on the external triggers. But what I’m now realizing is that my internal triggers are still there. I sabotage myself with my own mind. I convince myself that what I’m experiencing is nowhere near as sweet as some other, idealized version of the situation that I’ve crafted in my head. It doesn’t matter how unlikely or how ridiculous or how impossible that version of events is. I have a tendency to romanticize that version, so reality will always be disappointing.

Just look at the Paris trip. I’d been imagining what it would be like to be in the city that I love with a man that I love for nearly seven years, romanticizing what we’d do and ho I’d feel about it. Is it any wonder the disappointment crept in?

And that’s not to say we didn’t have an incredible time. We did — in so many ways that were vastly different than what I imagined. That doesn’t mean we had a bad time though. It was just different, and different is okay. Different is preferable, actually, because how boring would life be if everything turned out exactly as we imagined it? I would have never ventured to guess we’d have an amazing time wandering home along the Seine, a little drunk, stopping for a kiss and to marvel at the fact that we were, actually, in Paris. My imagination could have never conjured how much I loved visiting Fondation Louis Vuitton for a Tom Wesslemann exhibit and listening to my husband explain his favorite pieces to me. There is so much my dreams tend to miss. So why do I cling to them so readily?

I’m on record as being against resolutions. But if one of the mantras I will add to my list for 2025 is this: What you are experiencing right now is the best it will ever be. It is true, after all. Now I just need to learn to believe it. But that’s what the work is, isn’t it?

xx MDR