Putting someone on a pedestal is a crime I know I am guilty of committing. There’s nothing wrong with putting the ones you love and care about above everyone else, but it does become an issue when you put those particular people above yourself.
Coming from experience, putting somebody on a pedestal often times made me feel like I wasn’t good enough or that I constantly needed to show this person love, respect and affection hoping they’ll appreciate it and want to give it back to me the same way I gave it to them.
Naturally, when we fall in love with someone or when we try to win a person over, we see them as people who hung the moon—all their flaws are unnoticeable, or not even there (in our eyes). We tend to believe we need to measure up to them or that we are incapable of ever being as good as them and as bright as they are. The problem with putting people on a pedestal is that we sometimes take ourselves off of it while we also compromise certain standards in our life to keep them present. We go out of our way to make them happy, and sometimes do things that we may even feel uncomfortable with doing just so we can win their approval. We avoid revealing our flaws, insecurities, who we really are in hopes that it will keep them close, rather than push them away.
What’s purely ironic is that when we glorify, or even idolize these people, we end up blaming them when they don’t live up to what we thought they were, or could be. We fill our heads with expectations and blur out the reality of who they are—a person in our life that we love and care about. That’s it.
Another common situation that occurs when we put the people we love and care about on pedestals is that they sometimes take advantage of the power we bestow upon them when they are around. They do this purposely, and unknowingly because we made it apparent that we will do anything for them, and be anything they want us to be. It takes away our right to be human beings when we are sacrificing ourselves for someone else, and constantly trying to be someone we are not for the sake of making them happy.
But why do we do this? Why do we ditch our true selves to compensate the needs of someone else? Why do we need to feel like we need to bow down, and give all we have to make the person we love happy? We should feel as though they love and accept us for who we are, without having to do them favors, without seeing them in such a high regard, right? Well, often times they do, but when we make them feel bigger and stronger than us, we blind them by this ideology, cloud and fog them from seeing who we truly are which then leads the relationship down the wrong path.
Putting someone on a pedestal takes away the authenticity and simplicity of getting to know these people. We become absorbed in our expectations and assumptions that we overlook the fact that they’re human beings too. They’re people who have flaws, weaknesses, etc. just like us. We shouldn’t feel small next to the person we are supposed to be with, be equal to—sometimes putting these people on this so-called pedestal means that we should just walk on the same ground together, without putting them above ourselves and others.
Before you push these people above you, remind yourself where you lie in this relationship. You are a person, just like them, who has faults, imperfections, shortcomings and shouldn’t feel belittled by what we believe about the person before us. Don’t diminish your strength and power, keep it and never let go of it.
