I've been single for almost seven years now. I didn't think it was even possible to go this long without love and not get all squirrely and miserable about it, but I know now that I could probably go the distance, if it came to that, and be content.
I used to read romances when I was a teenager, especially in my early teens when the bodice-rippers read like soft-core porn. The bestsellers had fewer "heaving bosoms" and "steely thighs clad in tight buckskin", but they had their moments (being bestsellers, after all), and I would skip ahead to the scenes when they got down to it, and then go back and read the whole book.
Forbidden Love was a huge theme in the bestsellers. Sometimes the heroine was married to someone else, sometimes a jerk but more often a really nice guy. She loved her husband and he loved her, but this other great Love of her Life would keep popping up, resulting in angst and secret love children and all sorts of mess. It made for a good read, but struck me as being pretty stupid overall. Even as a young teenager, I would think, "Why don't they just get together or move on? Don't you outgrow this stuff eventually?"
I figured that I was way too smart for that nonsense.
I married a guy who seemed to be a nice guy, but was no Great Love. It was a Moderate, But Pleasant Love. Maybe it could have grown into something deeper than that, but instead it took another direction entirely, and we parted after a little less than ten years, emotional strangers. When I see him (because I have to, we have two children), it seems impossible that we were ever together at all.
When I think of Great Love I think of three men I've known. I don't know how this measures up to other women--maybe they have known more, or less, or none, or just the one, like the heroines in the bestsellers--and I can't say exactly what it is that sets them apart from the other men I've known, quite a few who were really, really great guys, but something does. The first man was gay, but he couldn't acknowledge that at first, so we plunged into a very intense, romantic, heady friendship that probably only those under twenty-one with artsy pretentions can experience (as we were). We've lived 3,000 miles apart for the past twenty years, but still have a bond that runs deeper than many old friends do.
The second was married, and that is that. Married, or in any way attached, men do not spark interest in me, in fact, they generally dampen it right out of existence. He was the disorienting and upsetting exception. He and I are not friends, as that could not work. It is peculiar that we can't be friends--I am extremely comfortable with being buddies with guys, but again, he was not just some nice guy who I liked a lot, and I really couldn't tell you why.
Am I a pragmatist at heart? For with both these men, rather than longing for them with a passion that time could not abate, I have long since "moved on".
Then, there is the third man. He is not gay, and he is not married, but for his own reasons, was not available, and still isn't. Maybe that will change, or maybe it never will.
Presumably, those bestsellers do so well because the women who read them daydream about romance. They want passion and excitement, and enjoy feeling it vicariously through a book. I wonder if most of those women are like me, though...have met the guy, felt those feelings, and knew it wouldn't work, so chose the better road...
...and go read trashy novels to appreciate what a disaster it would have been if they hadn't let go of that One, Great Love.
I am content to be single, but I do dream of love. You know--the kind of love where I can go to bed with my socks on, and he doesn't notice because he's too busy flicking through the DVR. That kind of love. The kind I didn't read about when I was thirteen.
(Below is a clip from the miniseries from the book The Thorn Birds. Nothing says "forbidden love" like having a lifelong crush on a priest, having his love child, and pretending it's your husband's...it makes the rest of us look fabulously wise and savvy in comparison. Richard Chamberlain was darn cute back then...too bad he's gay, huh?)
2 comments:
Someone is pondering love, passion and the complexities of the male/female relationship. How do you ponder these things on a camping trip?
After reading your post, I realized that my life was created from a good trashy novel of sorts. Or maybe my parents were just caught up in the whole 60's love child thing, while tripping on whatever you tripped on in the 60's.
Was it passion, love, romance or were they just bored and looking for excitement when they forgot not only the birth control, but my father's wife (which was not my mother).
Some things are better off left in novels.
Hope that your camping trip is fun. How do you blog while camping? I usually just run from bears.
I blogged BEFORE camping. During camping, I was much more concerned about keeping the kids from tracking mud ALL OVER the tent, and how Starbucks Via instant coffee really is a must-have item, but there must be a quicker way to heat up water than lighting something combustible on fire, like, with a match, and putting a pot over it (but, there isn't. It's camping, for heaven's sake.)
Bears?
Wow, your heritage! Write that memoir, whoever you are--I'll read it. (Thanks for the comment, it made me smile.)
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