Fantasies in and of themselves are not a bad thing. They become unhealthy when you are so totally focused on them rather than living in the realities of your life. When all you do is daydream about what your life could be like and what you wish it to be, you are only harming yourself and all of the loved ones in your life because you're wasting your time on something that doesn't even exist, rather than facing the realities of your life.

Hope is very necessary for us as human beings if we want to succeed in this life. Without hope, we don't have true meaning in life and we don't have something to believe in and look forward too. In our matchmaking efforts for our own lives there is a delicate balance between reality and fantasy. If you want to date the guy or girl of your dreams, sometimes you will be sadly mistaken; not because this person does not want to date you, but because this dream person does not exist, except in your fantasies. Discovering this truth is like a burst of reality hitting us and sometimes we see it but then don't want to believe it and continue in our fantasy world and never find true love because our expectations are too high. Other times, we discover this truth and it paralyzes us because we then give up hope that our matchmaking efforts for ourselves will never succeed and we won't find true happiness because our dream guy or girl does not exist. Therein lies the problem.

We need to look that truth boldly in the face and declare to ourselves that we will not become prisoners of that truth but that the truth will set us free. When we find that balance between reality and fantasy we will find success in our matchmaking efforts in our dating seeking relationships.

Having a distorted image of reality that is mostly based in fantasy will place our expectations too high and when we look at other dating prospects no one will look like he or she fits the bill of what we're looking for because they are not our dream date. That's the crux of the issue; there are no perfect people out there and you and I are not perfect either. We can't hold people to such high standards. Of course, there are certain standards and relational boundaries that we can hold people to, but we should also hold ourselves equally accountable to those same standards and boundaries.

Such standards that are based in reality are punctuality, stability, commitment, faithfulness, honesty, kindness, cleanliness, physical health and well-being, etc. Notice that I did not place physical beauty on that list. That's because physical beauty is important and as human beings, we definitely are attracted to certain body types; however, that should not be a deciding factor in how we judge people in our relationships. In our matchmaking efforts, we need to be attracted to someone's inner beauty first and foremost. Outside beauty fades and as we age and mature, it's our inner beauty that should hopefully be getting more beautiful as time passes.