Slay your own dragons

From the moment girls are born it begins. We are being programmed. For your early years you are force fed the Great Disney classics like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and other such tales of love, romance and handsome Princes that risk life and limb to save you. After childhood, your teenage years, Saved by the Bell and Daytime Soap operas, more of the same story line. So by this point you have started to make certain assumptions about what love and dating is like.

When I was in middle school I really expected high school to be just like Saved by the Bell, My high school years were, in fact, nothing like I had anticipated.

So naturally you would assume that by the time I graduated from high school, moved on to college and into my adult years that I would learn that life is NOTHING like the movies, or like T.V. I did not learn this. I still actually believed that there was ONE person for me, soul mate, my other half, that was out there somewhere. By the time I was 20 I had faith that two people met, fell in love, got married and lived at the least a semi-happy ever after. There is much propaganda to fuel this thought process.

Exhibit A: Romance Novels. Same story every time, boy meets girl, girl has some reason to hate boy, boy pursues girl with undying ferocity until after "the angry kiss" they realize that they are madly in love and live happily ever after.

Exhibit B: Chick flicks. Much like Romance Novels they have a very similar theme, but always the promise that there is one perfect person for everyone, "You complete me." -Jerry McGuire "Id rather fight with you than make love to anybody else." - The Wedding Date, "You make me wanna be a better man." -As Good as it Gets. Girls love this shit, it restores the belief that there is a guy out there that will say the perfect thing at the perfect time and that you will have your "Movie Moment."

and Exhibit C: Primetime T.V. Why does Grey's Anatomy have more viewers every week than any other show, because of all the cool medical stuff? Hell NO! It's because it makes you believe. What is genius about the writing on this show is that the characters are flawed, awkward and damaged enough to give the viewer the message that they are REAL. Thus restoring faith that there really is a McDreamy that you will end up with or at the very least, enough McSteamy's to keep you busy til he realizes you are the one.

We are programmed. Partially because we want to believe. Every now and then you see just enough in real life to make you believe that it DOES happen. Your friend gets married to the perfect guy, at the perfect wedding (in which you actually loved your dress) and appear to have the perfect life...

Until he admits to an affair, they move out of their big shiny new house into separate small apartments. She confesses to you over a pint of Moose Tracks that she has never really been happy and she is relieved that she has a way out. SERIOUSLY? WTF!

And it happens again to your Goody Girl Cousin who he finds in his bed with some random guy in a cowboy hat and spurs that she is riding like its the last 8 seconds of the Rodeo Finals...

And again to your next door neighbor, who is loading her stuff in to a U-haul and tells you "We just drifted apart."

And Again to the girl at work who missed a couple days to "Iron Out" the legalities of the restraining order he put on her when she torched all his stuff on the front lawn because there were an alarming amount of text messages on his cell phone bill attributed to some "Home Wrecking Hussy, whose name is actually Chastity, can you BELIEVE that?"

And so it goes, because we are not equipped to handle what real relationships are like. Because there are too few movie moments. Because you realize that the honey moon doesn't really last forever. Because you finally understood after a couple years that you settled, or you got married to young. And because after years of feeling unappreciated someone else pays attention to all the wonderful things about you that your partner has seemed to have forgotten.

I hope I am wrong, and I hope that people really can be matched on "the 29 dimensions of compatibility" by the wonderful non enterprising folks of e-harmony. I hope that "True Love" really exists, it happens, and most of all that it lasts, but I see no evidence to support this.

I am not completely giving up on this, after all you can't undo overnight, decades of conditioned response, but at the least I will see the chick flicks, grey's anatomy's and etc as what they are, fantasy produced and marketed for my entertainment.

Update:
I have since found my Charming Prince, got married and am pursuing my happy ever after. I'll let you know how it goes. So far.... so good.

13 heartbreaks and the Broken Road

July 26, 2006

13 Heartbreaks and the Broken Road Okay, this is partially in response to my dear friend Jarrod's recent blog in which he discusses love. Here are my thoughts on the subject. You are falling without remembering stumbling, You come out of you shell so to speak, but not until the exact moment that you are blinded by the exquisite brightness do you realize that you have been previosly engulfed by darkness. Colors are more vibrant, your senses are sharpened. And you are so unexplicably happy, that it it scary. For me that is what falling in love is like. Here you are just bee-bopping along, loving life, doing the work thing and then BAM! you are in it. Not sure how you got there, but it is sooo great! The unfortunate thing is that a lot of people don't even realize they are in love until it is gone. Poor saps, you have to feel sorry for them, not even getting to appreciate it. I read once that statistically people think that they are "in love" 13 times before they actually find "the one." Let me be the Master of the Obvious for just a second here but that means 13 heartbreaks, 13! That is like touching an iron just to see if it is hot; You know there is damn good possibly you will get burned, but you do it anyway just to see? Insanity!!! So this is usually how it goes, you meet somebody, you are immiediately attracted to them and your first thought is "Okay he's/she's cute, but what is wrong with them." So somewhere in your acquaintance you discover how much you have in common and how funny the other person is until it becomes just the two of you, two peas in a pod if you will, against all the wackos, and freaks in this world. So naturally you share yourself. You reveal your hopes and dreams You tell him/her about your family. You make them meet your friends (only partly to get their approval) You go places together, have amazing sex (73% of women polled said that the sex they are having right now is the best they have ever had.) and they reciprocate. Basically you invite someone else into your world. So here you are floating in enamoured bliss when uh-oh something goes wrong, and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets. So what do you do? You do not want to lose this love, so you grab on with both hand and frantically pull it back to you. You are convinced that you can control it, if you try hard enough. Possibly you are one of those people who choose not to acknowledge the problem in hopes that it will just go away. But it is lost. So when your lover escapes, OOPS I mean leaves, they take with them, that emotional, physical, or spirtual part of you that you gave them. I think that is the "broken" part. So now you have this void inside of you that you have to fill. The most popular method is to fill it with Tequila or your favorite booze at least for a couple days. You promise yourself that you will not be stupid anymore, that you will get through this. you surround yourself with the people who have always loved you the most, family and friends. And so you begin to heal. You are at a point now that you have have replaced all the bitterness and hate of your broken relationship with hope and resolve. You aren't broken anymore, so what do you do, you go and find love again. Sounds crazy right? Each time that your heart gets broken and your realionship fails you change. Each time you become a new person, one who is ready for a different kind of realtionship. You teach yourself to be more cautious, to ask more, reveal less. You are smarter, wiser with new tricks. You are slowly, painfully becoming the person that you need to be when you find "the one." The unfortunate thing is that each new lover has to pay for the old lovers mistakes, but that is the price you pay in love. All of the pain, the tears, the booze, the mistakes, one night stands and bad breakups are the "Broken Road." The Broken Road, that scary winding path that you travel to find by accident or mishap the one person that you are meant to be with. Weary traveler, don't despair. When your heart is broken and you feel that there is no hope, just remember that you are almost there. Just around the next bend or over the next hill, you will find it, or it will find you. Does it really take 13 times? I hope not, I am sure it is less for some and more for others. Just know that it IS out there. Don't settle, don't put up with love. I've always said that I would rather have I love I couldn't live without than one I could stand to live with. SO, with that said, I guess i should kick the tires and light the fires cause it looks like it is gonna be a long bumpy ride. 9:50 PM