[Mactastic]

A few months ago I came across a term in a therapy book called The Golden Fantasy. In the context of this book it meant that some women feel like when they meet a man to sweep her off her feet she will learn to love herself and everything will end happily ever after. Think Cinderella. A few months before I read about this idea I stopped dating completely because I started to realize I was waiting for my Golden Fantasy and I had the nagging feeling that I needed to love myself before I could be loved, though at the time I didn't know it had a name. That's around the time I began therapy.

The other day I came across this term again (can't remember where), this time in reference to therapy. Much in the same way a woman might believe a man could fix all her problems, there's the notion that therapy/her therapist can fix all her problems. This is me I have this idea that if I work hard, take all his advice, be transparent, be vulnerable, and work through all the way to a successful termination then I will finally be happy.

I sent an email to my T explaining the term and how I was feeling about it. I told him I thought we should talk about it next session. It sounds like it's going to be awkward and rather depressing (he's surely going to deflate my fantasy, as he should) but the conversation should be had.

What do you think about it? Is this in fact a therapeutic term? Are you experiencing a Golden Fantasy in your own therapy? Have you ever had a similar conversation with your therapist?

[Asiablue]

I've never hear that term before. But i've definitely fantasized about the therapist somehow saving me from all the heartache that my reality brings. I know it's me that has to do the work, that she can not do the work for me, that she will never be anything other than my therapist and that one day she won't be in my life. But it doesn't stop me hoping somehow that she can fill a space i have in my life.

[unaluna]

I gotta run now but google it, there is an article about it. I have a copy saved on my old phone. Thats useful huh. But its more about prebirth experiences, and afterbirth! Sorry. You know like the perfect mother, how that feels for the infant, and wanting to find that bliss again.

[Leah123]

I have had an idle fantasy of moving in with her on occasion, because her house and life are quiet with lots of room, haha, and mine are NOT. But... I have never really wanted her to save me from everything, I'm just really too self reliant for that. I trust my own judgement too much and want to be self-directive too much to really want to be carried off to a golden castle.

I see therapy as more of a negotiation and learning process than a set of instructions that will lead to a perfect life if I follow them. I mean, I value her opinion, but I see her more as a mentor than a savior.

I guess I just don't think I could be authentic or happy in a golden castle.... I want to build my own one, a unique one.

[HealingTimes]

Right at the start of my journey into therapy, I very much had an idea that I would go along to a T for CBT for 16 weeks (that's what the NHS in the UK offered) and be cured.

I remember my very first therapy session EVER and after chatting for a while I said "OK, that's enough, now please wave your magic wand and cure me". Although part of me was joking, I think the other half was being deadly serious.

I joke with my current T about it now too, I often say that she CAN wave her wand and cure me, but that she refuses to do so.

[liquidfox]

I do this all the time. I know I shouldn't because I know the day will come when it's all ended and it makes it all the more hard to deal with.

[Lamplighter]

Yes, being saved is a common background theme in my mind and though I might rationally know it's bollocks, especially after several decades of knights in shining armour doing a big bunk, I know I still harbour this bottom line belief that T will somehow in some magical unknown to me way do something that is going to make me feel really good about myself. Reflect me as likeable maybe? (I could think of a dozen different things he could do that would effect what I need, and I tell him so too, but he seems determined not to take any of my suggestions on board - the roll eyes is only half ironic, it makes me angry that he won't do the things I know will help me.)

As for talking to him about it, yeah I think I'm doing that all the time, sometimes without realizing it but mostly in a pretty aware way. But I haven't talked about it as a discrete concept with a label. And I don't really consider it a fantasy either so he wouldn't get that as a means of dismissing my needs by calling them unrealistic or a fantasy...

Is it really a fantasy? Is it really unattainable? Maybe in its pure imagined form, but elements of it surely must be real. Don't you think?