Longstanding daydreams and what happens when facts get in the way???

[sasi]

Hi Everyone,

                  I'm new on here anfter coming across this site after a google search.I really thourght I was the only person who had lived the last 30ish years running a parrallel daydream world.

  In real life I am very happily married to a lovely man and have 2 great kids.I have a good job that I enjoy and plenty of friends.My "fantasy"world comes from a very disfunctional childhood and I realised it helped me cope and survive what happened.

 

  I fantasise usually scenarios that involve a character from TV as my partner.There daydreams can get very involved and I do get emotionally attached.My problem comes when I find out things about their real lives e.g.they are married.I then feel devastated-as I would if it had actually happened in my real relationship.While my head knows that this is crazy I can't help the emotions.My latest fantasy life has become a bit too all consuming and for the first time ever has started to intrude on my life the last couple of months.Recently I found out that this actor was married and am now all over the place.

 Does anyone else have a similar story?How do you manage it?? 

[roxanne]

Hi, is anyone still out there?

[Brett Elaine]

Wow. So glad to see I'm not the only one!!

This has happened in one of my daydreams. In real life I was crushing hard on this boy so naturally I made up a DD where we were dating. This lasted for almost a year. It ended abruptly when I found out that he began dating someone. And that also signaled an immediate end to my huge crush on him. It was disappointing, but I didn't mind too much because I was also orchestrating two other DDs  as well as trying to manage school & work & being social and I was losing control. 

Right now I'm kind of having that issue, actually. I suspect that one of my characters who's based on a real life person (who I don't know personally) is dating someone. It may seem like I could obviously ignore this, but I can't. It's funny because a few months ago when I was deciding whether or not to cast this person I was hesitant because I was pretty sure I would eventually find something about a spouse or significant other. So I was really careful to not do too much pointed research with that person's personal life. But, of course I had to do a little bit of research on their background and while I don't have concrete evidence, all signs point to taken!

If I could 100% confirm that said character is actually taken, the WHOLE dream will most likely be immediately shattered which would be terrible because A) its a complex DD & this is just one relationship, so I may have to just end the relationship but I really don't want to, it's a match made in heaven! and B) while I often wish that I could kick my MD/this DD to the curb (it's my only active one right now)  I'm feel like I'm not quite ready yet....I want to be able to end this thing on my own terms and feel like a champion rather than being overwhelmingly compelled to end it and feeling like an adulterer haha

[sasi]

Hi,

I'm still here,just not looked at the site for a while.

B.E.-having been there myself i would advise giving it some time.When I suspected something about my "crush" based on something he said in an old show he is in i was all over the place for a few days.I found that steering away of any real life info or even old dvds for a while let me focus on my dd and my "reality" and the horrible sensations that came with the possible"truth" faded away.This might be harder if your crush is based on a "real" person rather than a celebrity but can you avoid any chat about that person?

Good luck

R-how are you doing.Are you still with your same crushes?

[roxanne]

Sasi, I was just thinking of you & everyone on this forum.  We are approaching my one year anniversary on Fri., since I learned that HE had new girl friend & I had to adjust.  I will always appreciate all the tips & hand-holding.  I am still with my 3 favorites - L, J & D.  I have found that your advice about avoiding all media and research about him is the only way to continue the "relationship."  Although he is very famous, his girl friends usually are not, which makes him less a tabloid magnet.  So I am warier & less intense, but continue to use him as my main crush.  If he gets married or something, that will be all over the place, and I will surely be a wreck.  Are you still "with" the same 2?  Hope everything in your life has turned out well.  You had so much on your table for so long.

Brett, we surely know what you are experiencing as this was one of the longest discussions ever, devoted to that topic.  As Sasi said, trying to avoid any new info about him is essential.  It makes no sense and as much analyzing as we did on the topic, it still made no sense that we could make these relationships up totally and yet get so bent out of shape by the intrusion of some detail in real life.  It's not like anything about the relationship is real.  Why can't we just ignore or change this new info to our liking.  We all seem to have personal rules that are hard to get over.  I still find this aspect of it fascinating in a dreadfully painful sort of way.  Remember that when your DD's are very intense, your heart & brain accepts this as real.  So when you have to "move on", it feels like a very bad break-up.

[Brett Elaine]

Thanks for the advice, Sasi & Roxanne!

I was doing well with avoiding sources for background info but every once in a while I couldn't resist looking for some background on him because I had a nagging feeling that my daydream wasn't as realistic as it could be. But I think I have enough info for me to put in more effort to avoid looking to sources of information about him that could damage or end the dream, until maybe the characters end their relationship (but I don't see that happening).

It's funny because if something conflicts with a minor character in a major way, I get annoyed and spent lots of time making adjustments to reflect reality, but the DD isn't under threat of collapsing. While I'd rather not take my chances, now I wonder if this DD would actually collapse over this... unlike the DD that did fall through (let's just call it DD2) this one (DD4) wasn't created to revolve around the relationship so it's not like the DDs' viability hinges on it. But it could be starting to move in that direction: lately I have focused on the characters in the relationship and have largely ignored all the other characters..I don't think I did it totally on purpose but I like it because it takes much less time. I went from devoting hours at a time DDing/writing dialogue to help with the DD to ~10-15 min a day simply thinking/acting out conversations (and not writing anything down). 

[roxanne]

Is your character a celebrity?  You only DD 10 - 15 minutes a day? 

[Brett Elaine]

I'd say he's a quasi-celebrity, depending on who you ask. He's an industry executive so to some people he's a big deal but most people wouldn't know him from Adam. It's a little weird because he isn't someone who I'm inclined to care for in my real life, but he seems to fit perfectly with my pro so now I'm inclined to pay more attention to him. 

Yes, right now I am DDing a ~10-15 minutes/day. Some days it's more, some days it's less. Even two months ago I wouldn't have believed I could manage that. I think it's the combination of :

-Learning about this MD community...knowing that there are lots of others who have this--some of whom totally have it under control--makes me feel less weird and it's not something that I constantly worry/think about. 

-Not fueling my daydreams with research/writing. In my current DD, I acted out certain conversations with my pro and other characters and then also wrote things down in the form of a fake Twitter account. I didn't actually make an account, but I created a Word document with pages and pages of tweets between my pro and the other characters. Sometimes I'd create tweets just between two side characters, but that was simply because I planned for my pro to respond/react to it. Anyway, I basically forced myself to not write in the word doc and even though a few days later I created a new (but much less detailed) document basically doing the same thing, I weaned myself off of it. So now I don't write, which was probably the main source of energy to my DDing so cutting this out drastically reduced my urge to DD.

-Identifying triggers and avoiding them. There are some songs that I love that instantly remind me of certain characters. Even though I love those songs/artists, I refuse to listen to them unless I feel like I have time to devote to DDing and lately, I don't have any time for that. I'm not sure why but my pro's outfits have always been paramount to every DD I've had. I love online shopping but I cut that out so now it's not like I'm looking for an outfit in real life and then see something that makes me go, "Oh wow, that'd be a great outfit for such and such event!"

-Removing the element of time. Before, when I wrote things down, I had to keep up with my DD as each day went by but now I'm more focused on stuff coming up and stuff in the past. The things that I think about that are concerned with the present time are really date specific...like the situations/conversations could happen on any given day so I'm not pressed to think about new conversations/scenarios for my pro each and every day.

I didn't really think about it until now, but it is a pretty dramatic reduction in time and I barely noticed it was happening. I think about most of my characters/my DD each day but it's mostly in passing. I mainly have a few one-off conversations that last about 5 minutes at a time and it's usually during mindless solitary activity.

[Brett Elaine]

*edit: In last paragraph, I meant to say, "the things that I think about that are concerned with the present time are NOT really date specific."

Brett Elaine said:

I'd say he's a quasi-celebrity, depending on who you ask. He's an industry executive so to some people he's a big deal but most people wouldn't know him from Adam. It's a little weird because he isn't someone who I'm inclined to care for in my real life, but he seems to fit perfectly with my pro so now I'm inclined to pay more attention to him. 

Yes, right now I am DDing a ~10-15 minutes/day. Some days it's more, some days it's less. Even two months ago I wouldn't have believed I could manage that. I think it's the combination of :

-Learning about this MD community...knowing that there are lots of others who have this--some of whom totally have it under control--makes me feel less weird and it's not something that I constantly worry/think about. 

-Not fueling my daydreams with research/writing. In my current DD, I acted out certain conversations with my pro and other characters and then also wrote things down in the form of a fake Twitter account. I didn't actually make an account, but I created a Word document with pages and pages of tweets between my pro and the other characters. Sometimes I'd create tweets just between two side characters, but that was simply because I planned for my pro to respond/react to it. Anyway, I basically forced myself to not write in the word doc and even though a few days later I created a new (but much less detailed) document basically doing the same thing, I weaned myself off of it. So now I don't write, which was probably the main source of energy to my DDing so cutting this out drastically reduced my urge to DD.

-Identifying triggers and avoiding them. There are some songs that I love that instantly remind me of certain characters. Even though I love those songs/artists, I refuse to listen to them unless I feel like I have time to devote to DDing and lately, I don't have any time for that. I'm not sure why but my pro's outfits have always been paramount to every DD I've had. I love online shopping but I cut that out so now it's not like I'm looking for an outfit in real life and then see something that makes me go, "Oh wow, that'd be a great outfit for such and such event!"

-Removing the element of time. Before, when I wrote things down, I had to keep up with my DD as each day went by but now I'm more focused on stuff coming up and stuff in the past. The things that I think about that are concerned with the present time are really date specific...like the situations/conversations could happen on any given day so I'm not pressed to think about new conversations/scenarios for my pro each and every day.

I didn't really think about it until now, but it is a pretty dramatic reduction in time and I barely noticed it was happening. I think about most of my characters/my DD each day but it's mostly in passing. I mainly have a few one-off conversations that last about 5 minutes at a time and it's usually during mindless solitary activity.

[roxanne]

That is really amazing.  What is "pro", by the way?  Are your characters in the background?  My DD'ing time is much less formal but always present, sometimes in foreground, sometimes not, but almost always intermingled.

 

Today is one year anniversary.  Thanks to Sasi & JeN & others, I am surviving well.  Or: well, I am surviving.

[Brett Elaine]

Pro is short for protagonist, i.e., the main character..got a little lazy while typing.

 I'd say if I DD 3x/day, my characters are in the background at least once and the other two times I'm giving the DD undivided attention because I'm literally mouthing conversations. Before, my only option was to sit there be engrossed in the DD. I couldn't do anything unrelated to the DD no matter how monotonous. If I did any additional activity, it had to be related to the DD, like actively browsing clothing websites for outfits or typing up dialogues to put in my little Word document. 

I think ideally, I'd like to have it intermingled. I've never had success in trying to limit the amount of time I DD. So even though right now I'm DD'ing at what I would consider a favorable amount, I wasn't able to decide that for myself. & the amount of time is approximate...I just sense that it's about 15-20 min because I'm DDing snippets of only  2-3 conversations/scenarios. Now that I think of it, this past week I haven't DD'd about anything new. Each time I DD, I am re-enacting the same two conversations. It may be because this is a semi-stagnant time for my pro (and a busy time for me in real life). This will probably change in a month. We'll see! 

Have you ever had days when you were not able to do anything except DD?

[roxanne]

No, again, I kind of intermingle everything.  Although at night, in bed, and in evening while on Kindle or watching TV, I'm using reality only as back drop.  But during the day, I do whatever I am doing, but they are always there, too.  I wouldn't think of giving them up.

[Hank]

NO NO facts they are terrible . I want my story to carry on as per how i want it to be . I am still on the same celebrity crush i have from years n this freaky facts gets in the way to spoil the whole good goddamn story . Notify me when you figure out how to stay protected from these facts . Thank you .