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As a young girl, like many, I watched all the little love stories Disney had to offer about being a princess and finding a prince. I, too, was under the optical illusion that I could find this very person. I even thought as a teenager that I would meet my boyfriend in high school, and he would write little love notes and leave them in my locker. Then, we would get married, live happily ever after with a house, kids, and a dog. You know, the dreams we fostered from watching movies. The funny thing is, no one ever told me about the traumatic experiences behind it all and how romance can be seen in a whole different light than what you see on TV.

TV gives you characters that seem real, but no one ever talks about the reality behind those characters and how those characters betray real life. When I was in college, I wrote a thesis paper on Disney films called “The Fairytale Syndrome.” Many women watch Disney movies as kids and grow up believing that these fairytales will come true. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that kind of love, but the problem arises when you start to really analyze these things.

Aspects of Disney movies, like princesses and prince, can have negative connotations. For example, in “Beauty and the Beast,” the Beast seems very controlling. Belle becomes obsessed with him, and it seems like she falls head over heels in love with him, feeling that she is the one who can calm him. Just like in today’s society, we stay in relationships we should not stay in, thinking we can change the person. We try to bring balance to people to help calm them because we women are nurturers, but in truth, we want the person we love to see themselves as we see them. We don’t understand that we cannot fall in love with potential; we must have someone who has integrity and character. We can no longer accept that it’s okay to stay in certain situations that are not safe for us, just to have the fairytale we wanted as a child.

Despite the pressures of being in a relationship or wanting to be in one, it’s not okay when it puts you in places or rooms you should not be in because you have chosen to be there in order to get what you see on social media, or TV. One thing I do know after being in a domestic violence relationship and dealing with childhood trauma that for us women, it’s scary to be vulnerable but in order to experience a true connection we have to be open to the experiences. It doesn’t mean that love is not possible due to having a negative experience, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t have somewhat of a fairytale, but one of the things that we must do is make sure it is healthy and respectful.

As I was reading an article from Psychology Today and one from Vogue, there were a couple of takeaways in those articles that I took to utilize, and I think it’s very important that we utilize the right kind of information and tools when trying to get back out and be vulnerable to love and have a positive relationship from a positive aspect. 

  • We have to confront our traumatic experiences. If you have a therapist or someone you can talk to, they can help you in the process to unpack the things that are bothering you. 
  • We have to rebuild our self-esteem because we took a hit when we experienced a domestic violence relationship. Those people groomed us in different ways to fit their lives, and at some point, we’ve lost who we were in order to make somebody else feel happy about who they are. So, our identity was attached to someone who was negative and influenced our lives, making it hard for us to move past certain points. 

The truth of the matter is we have to remember to take our time to heal and find our self-worth because nobody can love us the way we need to be loved if we don’t first love ourselves.

 

 

Art Work Credit: Debra Cartwright