In reality if all they did was support, support, support you, you’d do whatever you could to confront and challenge them. In fact, Mr. or Ms. Nice automatically become the doormat –they keep having people walk all over them. The nice, nice, nice person who suppresses their other side and only expresses their positive, altruistic and happy side is devaluing themselves and on the other hand someone who gets only support will eventually say, “This isn’t working I need somebody who can stand up to me. I want some challenge.”

There are times when it’s important to be soft, and times when it’s vital to be tough. We often don’t realize that the very greatest relationship we could have is the one that gives us both support and challenge. If we received nothing but support we would not have a relationship, because if any two people are too similar or exactly the same then one of them is not necessary. We need that balance of support and challenge, of positive and negative feedback, in order to grow and evolve.

From a state of balanced love you are able to enjoy the whole spectrum of emotions without being attached to any of them in particular. If you try to have only pleasure and laughter in a relationship, you will also experience tears and pain. Every relationship is a balance of the two, and the most miserable people I know are the ones seeking only happiness.

If you attempt to live in a fantasy, you’ll become frustrated and disillusioned with people because you’ll keep trying to make them match your fantasy, and it’s not going to happen. For example if you’re not satisfied with your partner or can never seem to find the right type of person it may be because you are partly comparing them to some fantasy and punishing them for not living up to your fantasy.

Many years ago I had a client in New York who was one of the wealthier women in the city. She’d written an exact and exhaustive list of the qualities of her ideal man, and it ran like this:

“I won’t even date a man unless he has a minimum of $15 million, is at least 6'1", has brown hair and eyes, owns a large company, is socially prominent, has at least one beautiful house, loves the finest in everything, is utterly devoted to pampering me, is willing to massage me at night . . .” Her list was all positives without any negatives, on and on. She had a list that no human being could ever fulfill.

I said, “Rachael, I’ve seen your criteria, and I don’t think such a man exists.”

She said, “That’s just because you don’t measure up. I’ll find him.” She was looking for an idealized, Hollywood version of her fantasy, but what she kept attracting into her life were gigolos with no job or money who wanted her to support them, who deceived her with big stories, used drugs, and had sex with her and then her friends. They were the virtual opposite of her fantasy. What they had going for them was strong physical and sexual attractiveness. She kept falling for them, believing each time that the right man had finally come along or that she could change them into her ideal.

This scenario had been going on for a number of years.

Then I received a call from her two years ago: “Dr. Demartini! Is there any way you can come to Hawaii for my wedding? I’ve finally found my man!”

I said, “Really? I’m booked in Europe and can’t make it, but congratulations!” In the back of my mind I was thinking, I’ve got to meet this guy. Sometime later, I was giving a seminar in California and bumped into her in a fine resort hotel. “So Rachael,” I asked, “how’s married life?” “Oh . . . well . . . it didn’t work out.”

“But I thought he was the man of your dreams.”

“Ahhh . . . he turned out to be another bastard. Gotta go. Bye!”

She didn’t want to talk about it, but what she had done was become infatuated and put another man on the pedestal and expected him to live up to unrealistic expectations.

Just like Rachael, so many men and women have romantic fantasies. Some women have them about the knight in shining armor who scoops them up in his arms with a rose in his teeth and carries them off to his castle/penthouse for mad, passionate lovemaking. What they get is a guy also with a big belly who scratches his butt, who’s just being a guy. But they punish him for it because he doesn’t match their fantasy. The guys have a fantasy that the girl is supposed to be beautiful, sexy, nurturing, and stay 30 years old for the rest of her life. They punish or leave her for being human. It costs them love if they stay and money if they go.

Every human being you’ll ever have a relationship with will be both nice and mean, supportive and challenging, pleasureful and painful, attractive and repulsive, at times. The purpose of relationship is not happiness, it’s a combination of happiness and sadness, which makes up fulfillment. If we are seeking happiness we’re only looking for half-fillment, and if we’re seeking sadness we’re looking for the other half-fillment; when we look for fulfillment we appreciate both sides.

Both sides, pleasure and pain, make up the dynamic called love, If you have a fantasy that love is only supposed to be one side you’ll reject half of love and won’t embrace the whole experience.

Dr. John Demartini is a best-selling author of “Count Your Blessings,” “You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days”, “The Healing Power of Gratitude and Love & The Breakthrough Experience”, “A Revolutionary New Approach to Personal Transformation”. Two of his most popular workshops include “The Breakthrough Experience” and “The Demartini Method”. Dr. Demartini is a modern day philosopher and is considered one of today’s best inspirational speakers. His understanding of the power of unconditional love is reshaping psychology as we know it, and his revolutionary personal transformation methodologies are transforming the lives of millions of people around the world. For further information on Dr. Demartini write us at info@drdemartini.com or visit www.drdemartini.com