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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
...that there is a complimentary article on salon.com today about bimbo role models for teenage girls. I grew up on romance novels, but find them boring today as an adult. They don't seem to resemble anything that I recognize as either love or lust.
What I notice in both articles is that they really seem to be about the desire of ordinary-looking people (whether men or women -- this is universal) to acquire a super-attractive sexual partner. In real life, this is next to impossible, so we relegate to the land of fantasy, whether that fantasy is romance novels (women) or porn (men).
The reality is that most of us are ordinary looking, and therefore can only attract ordinary partners. I know some fantasy is healthy and normal, but in our extremely materialistic culture, it can take on truly obsessive characteristics. When fantasy about the super-attractive dream-partner is an idle daydream, it may be pretty harmless. But when it causes otherwise sane human beings to spend thousands of dollars (sometimes money they don't have) on foolish beauty products, plastic surgery, elaborate clothing, internet porn, mail-order brides and so on, it becomes a force for self-destructive behavior and self-hatred.
Brightstar -- are you listening????
As skwilson noted, it is the small things that one might overlook in the romance novels that make a difference in loving relationships. Allowing one's significant other to catch a few more minutes of snooze by herding the cats out of the bedroom. (Hmm, "herding cats"...maybe that's bigger than I thought .) My partner's told me for years that these are the things that she finds "romantic" because she feels "heard" when I do them.
We still give each other cards, no-special-occasion gifts, etc. Even do the occasional "grand gesture" of flowers, dinner with candles and such. But the "romantic" gestures of every day life and something seemingly mundane as taking the time to listen to the other are what bind our relationship and help keep the "romance" alive.
I hope the LW finds her true love and herds cats every so often, as needed. ;-)
At least at the start of a relationship.
When you meet someone new there should be a hightened level of excitement. There should be drunken butterflies banging about in your stomach. You should feel like the most attractive woman on the face of the planet while in his company. You should also be wearing an oversized pair of love goggles when it comes to sex so that ideas like licking warm whipped cream off his hairy belly seems like a delicious prospect.Etc. Etc. Etc.
There is a reason that you need lightning bolts in the beginning. It's called marriage. Marriage is a wonderful thing. Two people committing to each other for life, sharing the good and the bad. It can also be pretty damn boring. In a nice way. In a flannel pajama,funny bedhead, did you feed the dog and mail your moms birthday card way. In my experience familiarity breeds warm affection in a marriage, not hot hot XXX action.
So don't settle! Get all the damn lightening bolts and bodice ripping that you can. If you do 35 years later when you look at him your eyes will still twinkle with those memories.
(that's really all i had to say)
. . . and funny thing, it all went down just like the advice said. Seriously. We've been married for 9.5 years.
I just bought a bodice-ripper at the grocery store last night.
My librarian found it in the bag - and I got a wicked grin . . .
That's why we have the fantasy worlds. If you want to find true passionate love, then yes you have to be receptive of it but realize a guy who really likes you is not necessarily going to hire a string quartet to serenade you or send you flowers repeatedly to get your attention.
To find love you have to be open to it and yes you have to do a little playing. I met my husband in my art class, in fact I signed up for art class to find a man who would probably have things in common with me and as soon as I saw him I knew I wasn't going to try and leave it to advance to a higher course(as I could have as I was way more advanced). So I set myself up to be noticed. When break happended I waited till he left to see where he went. Then I positioned myself on a bench to make sure when he came back I was the first thing he saw, it TOTALLY worked. By making myself open he came over and started to talk and flirt with me. I would notice that he would draw me or sit next to me whenever he could. After a month or so of the flirting and rides home he got up the nerve to ask me out and we've been together ever since. So I totally agree with Cary's advise. I think that sometimes love just falls in your lap, but I think more often than not it is something you have to work towards the same way you do building a resume. You have to know that you want and make sure any object of your affection notices you. You can't be completely passive.
And appreciation of the small things really works wonders. I fall in love all over with my husband because of remembering all the things he did when we were dating, how he remembered what my favorite pie was and bought it for a surprise. Little notes to me, doodles he didn't know I knew about, inviting me totally into his life and introducing me to all of his friends right away.
In my opinion anyone can make grand gestures that can be genericly passed around and it's called romance, like candelight dinners, rose petaled bathrooms and bedrooms, but it's any gesture catered spefically to you that is truly romantic.
Plus it may be time to give up the romance novels for a while so as to not compare too much to any real hero you meet in life.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
