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• Sunday, May 21, 2006 06:38 PM

  Stars in your eyes make you blind

  I can't help but notice the parallels here between romance novels and beauty magazines. Studies have shown that women feel worse about themselves after reading beauty magazines, presumably because they're disappointed about their real life not measuring up to the standard of perfection. I wouldn't be at all surprised if women who regularly read romance novels similarly feel disillusioned in the relationships they do have or feel like they will never find true love.

  I just celebrated my 12-year wedding anniversary. My parents have been married more than 30 years, which was a positive example, but they also said that I should hold out for my "soulmate", the one with whom I would have a magical, passionate, intense chemistry. And so for the first half of my marriage I was constantly disappointed and figured that I chose the wrong man, because we didn't have that fairy-tale kind of magic and I thought that there must be such a person waiting out there somewhere for me. I was overlooking the good marriage I already had because I was so busy thinking that I had missed my soulmate who would make me feel the romance-novel kind of fireworks.

  During one of my conversations with my husbands (which was probably pretty obnoxious, in retrospect) in which I worried about the fact that we weren't soulmates, he said that he thinks we are. He said that soulmates aren't something you're fated to be, but something you become over time. I think he's right. I've known more than my fair share of people who claimed to be marrying their "soulmates" and ended up divorced later. Once you have really gotten to know your spouse over many years, and you still love them and want to be with them anyway, that's a soulmate. That's a mature kind of love, rather than a blind one. It's not about settling for less than you deserve - it's about choosing someone, growing together and becoming true lifemates.

  I believe it was in the movie "Closer" that said something like "If you're looking for love at first sight, you never stop looking." I think there's a lot of truth to that. A lot of women approach looking forward to meeting Mr. Right the same way kids look forward to Christmas. But the problem with that approach is that, if you think back to Christmas as a kid, there's always the moment of letdown when you realize everything you waited for is here and there's no more anticipation. Love is about a lot more than magic; it's about how you make it through when the initial excitement is gone.

  —conflictgirl
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