Very well said, dreams!!
The ideal man was only half of a whole mess. He had the luxury of being able to act like a hero during the day because at night he could go home and hide from everything in the bottle.. He acted ideally because he was mirroring the person he knew I wanted him to be. He was not real.
This is especially poignant to me. I had to come to the same painful realization about my marriage. For a long time, I felt conned. He was such a chameleon; becoming whatever the closest person to him at the moment wanted him to be. In reality, he was an angry, resentful, entitled drunk who had a whole lot of growing up to do. And I became his #1 target for those negative emotions.
Letting go of a warped sense of hope was hard. It doesn't mean we stop "hoping", it means what you describe...we stop letting "hope" equal inaction.
We've talked here often of these addiction-fueled relationships as being the hardest to let go of. For me - a lot of it was tied up in the hoping and wishing he would be the guy I thought he was.
Acceptance is realizing he is the guy he is. He is not the guy for me. And that's ok. And I wasn't doing any favors to him, wishing and hoping he'd change!
Putting "hope" in a more realistic perspective allows us to let go of the fantasy and create our own reality, whatever it may look like.