Romantic identity

Based on Vineeto’s writings, “Romantic identity” is a component of social and sex identity that she defines as the “Cinderella-syndrome”. It is a “romantic dream that most women have” of finding a “perfect and noble man”.

Core Function

The primary function of this identity is to seek a partner who can provide “perspective, meaning, definition and identity” to one’s life. This includes finding someone who:

• Provides care when one’s “own strength fails”.
• Fulfills specific roles, such as “father of our kids, provider of social status, security or a purpose for life”.
• Answers existential questions on one’s behalf. Vineeto notes this identity seeks a partner to be the “answer to the question which I wasn’t willing to face myself: ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’”.

Manifestations and Consequences

When this identity is active, particularly when “falling in love”, it produces several negative effects:

• Pining: Vineeto describes this as a primary symptom. She felt “tied to him on a long elastic cord and not able to fully enjoy whatever I was doing by myself”.
• Dependency: The identity creates an “exhausting dependency” , which Vineeto likened to being “as silly as a teenager” despite being 44 years old.
• Projection: It prevents an actual meeting with the other person. Instead, the partner becomes “a projected imaginary figure on my own screen of emotions” , an image that “had nothing to do with the actual person or situation”.

Relation to Female Identity

Vineeto explicitly links the romantic identity to her conditioned female identity. She notes that “love and empathy are praised as woman’s greatest virtues!” and that she had been conditioned to believe her “only identity and power had been to feel and express emotions”.

She also identifies a “subtler version” of this identity, which is the need to feel “connected” to her partner. This manifested as “wanting to use him as an outline for my own existence, as an anchor to define me as ‘person-in-relation’, a ‘self’”. Vineeto traced this “need for an anchor” directly to the “female instinct for protection”.

Dismantling the Identity

To move beyond this identity, Vineeto had to “abandon the love-dream” and “debunking the romantic dream” , which she called the “wobbling monster of love”. This process involved facing her life’s questions herself . Upon doing so, her pining ceased, her expectations vanished, and she “recovered my autonomy” , concluding that “I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness”