There’s a guy i’ll call Blue that I’ve been knowing for quite some time now. Since ive met him i’ve had a boyfriend and a girlfriend and he still wont budge, not that I want him to. He’s what most women would call perfect: he has a good job (he’s a cop), a nice car, looks good, a body made by Milk (mmm), nice smile, respectful, opens doors, kisses like a movie scene, my family loves him, he says all the right things (he actually told me that nothing and no one would keep him from loving me…wow), and he’s smart as a text book! My god, he’s perfect.
Then there’s D. She’s beautiful, has a body most men lust after and most women wish they had, pretty smile, but a bad attitude. She can be sweet when she wants to be but hardly ever wants to be, breaks my back in the bedroom, but breaks my heart outside of it. She knows just what to say to get under my skin, and reminds me by doing so. D is- in a nutshell- problematic.
When i’m with Blue I feel a rumble in the ground. When im with D my whole entire world explodes! WHY IS THAT?! Why is it that mister perfect gives me some insignificant feeling of temporary happiness and D is like the equivalent of being connected to an IV drip of feelings 24/7! Why is Ms. Problematic winning over Mr. Perfect???
I tried to imagine it was because the sex was better but all in all i’d suffer through years of mediocre sex just to get the kind of love ive always wanted. Sex is something you can easily teach. How not to be an asshole, is not. Then I thought that it was because I spend more time with D since we go to the same school and basically lived with one another last semester, however, I had known Blue almost a full year by the time D was even a thought, so he’s even got her on time. I simply do not know why she wins! I can not, for the life of me, figure out why i’d rather be with D than Blue any day.
I blame Romance novels and movies. Ask any average romance novelist the formula for their story, it’s usually: boy meets girl, girl meets girl, or boy meets boy (hey, I’m in no place to judge) they fall in love, only to be met with a big problem to overcome. Either girl or boy makes a sacrifice to overcome that problem (i.e. cancels his wedding to be with you in the style of the wedding planner) and the pair lives happily every after and thats why we read and watch, for the great story that makes. Bottom line: I dont feel like im part of a romance worth having unless theirs a big problem i’ve got to overcome with the one I love so that I can tell the story to the kids one day! There’s nothing to tell the kids about how Blue and I got together and have been a perfect dating pair since day one, and never even had the slightest disagreement, not even over what movie we were going to see. But I will always be able to tell the story about how D’s ex girlfriend lived down the hall from me at school and how our relationship became the campus soap opera after D left me to go figure out where her heart was and went right back down the hall, only to come back down my way again after a couple of weeks.
Bottom line is that if there were not conflicts in romance novels we wouldn’t read them because then it would just be a book about a stupid couple boasting about how good they’ve got it. And who wants to read that? Women deal with the Mr. or Ms. Problematics of their lives not for their love of torture or for their desire to have a good fight every five minutes. They deal with it because if they’re following the formula right, there will be a great ending through all the madness. Someone will be standing outside their window with a boombox playing their favorite love song, there will be a kiss in the rain, they will have actually changed the one every one said would never change, someone will stop them before they get on their flight and propose to them in a busy airport….it will end perfectly. And right at that perfect moment, all the problematic CRAP would have been more than worth it.
But what if we’re not in romance novels? What if we’re just in nightmares we’ll never wake up from because we’ll never realize we’re alseep?
THAT’S my question….
Love and Lipstick 