I don't know why we do it to ourselves but we have all done it at some time in our lives.
You meet someone on vacation, you have a great time together, a mini-romance begins to brew and, wham! The vacation ends. But there's still hope; he promises you that he will call, text, or Facebook you and, in your vacay-euphoric state, you believe him.
Two weeks later, he is only a picture perfect reminder of a fun vacation. There you two are, smiling for the camera, arms around each other, looking for all the world like a couple in love. And now he hasn't gotten in touch with you? You begin to wonder what "you" did wrong. The answer to that is absolutely nothing!
"Was it me?" asks my friend Jenn after returning from a week spent in Costa Rica. "I mean he didn't even try to FB me. I tried contacting him but he hasn't responded. It had to be me! Maybe it was my looks, or maybe I wasn't interesting enough. Or maybe..."
I stop her small, self-loathing rant with a firm, "It wasn't you, it was just a vacation thing." However I can see that she doesn't believe me even though it is a reality; people you meet on vacations are different people when they return to their everyday lives. Promises made are generally not taken seriously. An "I'll-get-in-touch" said in the throes of tropical drinks, exotic locales, and poolside smiles doesn't mean a lot.
Vacations are like pleasant dreams. It's incredibly nice while you're there, but once you awake and begin your real day, everything changes. You may smile and remember the happy dream but you know it was just a dream.
It is the same when you meet someone on vacation. You can have a wonderful time with a special person but you need to remember that the place where you're vacationing isn't the same place where you live. You're happy and relaxed just to be away from your normal daily and mundane stress; you are in a totally different frame of mind. You have no worries because you have left all your usual day to day stressors at home.
Vacations put us in a dreamlike fantasyland and that's fine because your mind and body really do need to have a break from real life. Once you get back home, however, everything is the same. Financial, family, and work pressures are there waiting for you. It is the same for the person you have met on vacation. Life is different.
Out of every ten vacation romances, only one will show the promise of lasting. The reality is that you might not even be interested in that "fantastic" person if you did get to know him better. Chances are really good that if you did meet him after vacation you might not be so enthralled with him as you thought you would be. You may find that you two have different values, different ideas about the crucial things in life, and are not so compatible as you thought you would be.
Telling yourself that there's something wrong with "you" because the "amazing guy I met on vacation" hasn't gotten in touch, is self-defeating and really not fair. It has nothing to do with any faults of either one of you.
Enjoy the time you had together but understand the magic encounter you had on vacation was just that; magical and not reality.
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© 2012 copyright Kristen Houghton all rights reserved.
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Like this article? Check out other wonderful pieces from twoday magazine's weekly contributor, Kristen Houghton:
A Minor Inconvenience: Airport Security
Recession Depression: Can Your Relationship Survive?
Books by Kristen Houghton:
No Woman Diets Alone - There's Always a Man Behind Her Eating a Doughnut
And Then I'll Be Happy! Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness and Put Your Own Life First
Remember, Hetty? (A Short Story)
Her NEW book, Nourishing Thoughts: The Little Book of Sayings for a Healthy, Happy Life launched May 30, 2012...get your ebook copy today!
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