500 Days Of Summer

I just came from seeing 500 Days of Summer. It was a great movie and I think they’ve definitely hit the new direction romantic comedies are headed. They’re now tragedies where, in the same vein of The Beak-up, the leading man and leading woman do not end up with one another.

There was a time when people wouldn’t want to see a movie like this. This movie was real. It breaks from romantic comedy formula and fortunately is hitting the theatres at a time when the country’s whole sense of formula in the real world (the economy, healthcare and joblessness) is shattered. We’re ready to accept a romantic comedy that’s filled with more pain than romance.

My friend recommended I see it. “It was like watching every relationship I’d ever been in” he said. Always up for a good emotional flagellation, I went…alone and came back to my boyfriend asleep in bed on a diagonal leaving no room for me. It was only 9:30 and I couldn’t help wonder if he purposefully wanted to be asleep when I arrived or if his sleeping on a diagonal was his unconscious mind pushing me out. I also thought, at least he made it into bed and didn’t just pass out on the couch the way he did the 2 nights before. And no, we’re not fighting and so I shouldn’t think anything of it. He wakes up early, his job is stressful, he’s tired. I get it.

But the movie did unearth the one thought, one fear in my head that new relationships are prone to; one that I am trying to push aside and prove otherwise by his conscious actions. What if he just feels differently about me in the morning?

In the movie, Tom tells Summer he’s ok with the no labels thing she needs to be comfortable in the relationship but that he needs some consistency from her; some assurance that she won’t feel differently about him one morning, simply because she does. She then responded with the truest and most depressing line in the movie. “But I can’t give you that. No one can.” UGH.

No legal document, no diamond ring and certainly no repeated professions of love can give you that. I’ve noticed that the older we get, the more baggage we acquire, the harder it is to feel secure with anyone. I’m not saying it’s hard to feel good, just hard to feel secure, where you don’t question the other’s feelings. Where you don’t question if he wanted to be asleep before you got home; where you don’t question if he thinks the two of you are on overkill even though he asked you to move in with him…and well now, only a few weeks after he asked you, living together just may seem like overkill.

All couples go through it. Wives can’t wait for their husbands to got to work to have some alone time while the kids are at school. Husbands try to squeeze in as much guy time as they can get away with and well, it’s normal. Maybe that morning their feelings changed, the things that bothered them about their partner became glaringly clear and space was needed. But that’s not to say that the next morning or one morning the next week he won’t pull her close for a cuddle because he returned to his normal state of loving her.

I used to believe in the one. At this moment I think I believe in no one, no destiny, no meant to be. And the insanity is that I want there to be one. I want the fairy tale that has my name on it. Where the guy I’m with feels that I was made just for him as I feel he was made just for me. Crazy…maybe. Childish and naïve…sure. But do not be deceived by my own need for distorted emotional outpouring on the keystrokes. The film does end on a hopeful note and does try to restore order to the disorder it spent an approximately well conceived, cleverly written 95 pages creating. But even so, as I try to sleep on the couch, I can’t get the thought that my boyfriend wanted to be asleep before I got home out of my head.

A Good Woman

They say that behind every good man is a good woman. It may hearken back to a time when women’s lib seemed like a bigger struggle than that for health care reform. Or to a time when that was all women could say for their self worth and contribution to society…clean laundry and a home cooked meal.

As a product of the 80’s and a single sex education up until my freshman year of college, the idea of being a super woman was force-fed to us in the media and in schools. No way did simply being a wife and mother seem adequate or even a passing excuse to be alive. We had to achieve. We were given the opportunity; we’d better not waste it.

I always thought marriage and children would come. That they were things that would just happen not things you had to work on. Working at work seemed work enough.

Who knew that marriage and family took so much effort other than the forgotten women of the 50’s who didn’t burn their bras so they could build families?

I’m no saying women’s lib is bad, of course not…but it makes you feel bad when you reach 37 and all you really want is to take care of a man who loves you and hope you’re still fertile enough to have his children.

That life, the life I personally and I believe countless others as well put aside, knowingly or unknowingly in pursuit of something more, found out that something more was also something less.

I can’t complain. I’ve been proposed to 2.5 times. .5 because we discussed marriage and there would have been a proposal had I been willing to renounce Jesus and convert to Judaism. And I didn’t say no because they weren’t good men, we just weren’t good fits long term. I’m sure that now, as painful as it was in the moment, those men would agree.

And yet, I never thought I’d be where I am now…getting on in my 30’s with no husband or kids. But I’m not one to live my life by a clock either. Most people think I look ten years younger and anyone over 30 still feels like their in their 20’s even if only in their hearts, so what’s really the difference?

It’s just that when you see your friends’ younger sisters on Face Book with kids posting status updates about Sarah’s first day of kindergarten, you realize that if exactly one year from now you pushed out a little Sarah or Spencer, you’d be well into your 40’s on his or her first day of school. And while good genes and the miracles of modern science may all conspire to make that happen, it seems somehow like you’re just trying to catch up to the natural order of things.

My dad once told me that if I wanted to marry a doctor I should hang out in a hospital. I think he suggested I have lunch at the Columbia Presbyterian cafeteria. For me, someone who thinks love should and does just happen, his method seemed too calculated. I’m sure it seemed too calculated as well and knew it was less romantic but perhaps the necessary and more practical approach for a woman who worked in an office full of other woman and who didn’t seem to be getting out there enough or meeting the right people.

I was lucky though. I did just happen to meet become friends with and then fall in love with a really good guy who I believe just may have an opening for the position of a really good woman behind him.

Unemployment rates are high and if that spot is open, I think I finally have the experience and the desire to be a success in that position if asked again.

A Modern Fairy Tale

So as I’m coming to grips that the traditional fairly tale may be out of mine, I am wondering if a newer modern fairy tale couldn’t be just as romantic, maybe even more so. I always thought things would just happen and happen in the order they were supposed to, you meet a boy, fall in love, get married and have a baby.

But, what if you have a baby, get married and then fall in love. Is that so bad? Maybe it’s better. Maybe with all those people who did it the right way and ended in divorce, going out of order may be in order.

My good friend just turned 39. She was in a long distance relationship with an old college friend of mine I set her up with about 6 months ago. It started casually enough but quickly after they got close she told him how she had been planning on getting inseminated in September. She needed to have a baby before it was too late, with or without a man.

“I think the two of you should just go for it” I urged. Why not? Half of succeeding in a relationship is just having the conviction to do so anyway. When both people have it, it works. When one person doesn’t have it, they both fail.

And what about arranged marriages? There was a beautiful essay months ago in the NY Times Modern Love column about a man’s love for his wife by an arranged marriage and how in the end, she couldn’t have been more perfect for him. Isn’t it better to grow into love then to fall out of it?

So, whereas I used to think that getting pregnant out of wedlock is one of the most terrible things that could happen to a woman; I now think it can be a blessing in certain circumstances. A nudge from the universe if you will, to move forward with your life because, well….EVERYONE ELSE IS.

Sometimes we’re scared to make decisions on our own, to take action. Sometimes, it’s easier when the action is taken for us and sometimes the lemonade made from lemons is so sweet, you reach for a second glass…

…Which also brings me to another thought. Love is a choice. You can’t help who you’re attracted to. But once you make a decision to enter a relationship, loving someone means making a decision to weather out the tough times; the times when you’re not so in love and avoiding weak moments where you could easily let yourself fall in love with another, even if only for a weekend.

I think disorder is healthy. I think an unconventional fairy tale is possible if you’re just willing to believe it is. It becomes as possible as the conventional kind, if not more.