HEA: destructive love myth #5

Happily Ever After Endings in books and movies are the mainstay of the American public's experience with romance in fiction. But in reality? No one has a happily ever after ending. You get married or you get engaged. And then you don't ride off into the sunset with never a problem again. And everyone is disappointed because it's not like it's "supposed to be."

You have to deal with real life, which as a couple is in many ways enormously more complicated. You have to deal with two extended families. You have to deal with children, eventually, and combining parenting styles. You have to deal with finances, whether you combine your checking accounts or not, all those little questions about who pays the mortgage and the utility bill. These are not romantic, supposedly.

The solution that many people seem to choose? Get divorced. Then you can start all over again with the part of romance that seems to be the most attractive. The dating and going exclusive, choosing the dress, sending out invitations all over again. You can just keep doing it. You don't get just one HEA. You get a dozen of them. If you are Larry King. Right?

I suppose that as a writer, I understand the need for an artificial sense of closure. After all, the book has to end somewhere. If it's a romance, it ends when the suspense of "does s/he love me?" is over. I can accept that as one art form. I just don't get why that has to be the only form of romance that we read as American women. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I think there needs to be a new category of married romance about falling in love again. I think it can be just as funny, just as tense, just as romantic, and twice as beautiful. Also, real. It can even have a similar form, but no one is writing this and no one is selling it and I think it's unhealthy.

We all know that when we use super-skinny models as our ideal of femininity, we get anorexic women all over the world. And that's what happens with marriage, too. Romance is making us all anorexic. We look at our bodies, and our romances, and we think how fat they are, and we try to lose weight, and then we are surprised when we discover that you can never lose enough weight to be happy. NEVER. Because being happy, it turns out, is about accepting yourself, flaws and virtues, and looking for a different ideal.
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Published on April 07, 2011 18:07
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