I’ve been having conversations with a lot of my friends recently about relationships. The conversation tends to go like this:
Friend: ” I saw guy and girl out the other night, they looked so great together.”
Me: “What? Are they dating now? Why does no one tell me anything anymore? How long has it been?”
Friend: “Um it’s been like 3 months…”
My mind then tends to run between being incredibly happy for them, and analysing whether or not I think it will work out between them, and then to my cynicism of any romantic relationship, and the result of all that is usually a comment which is mixed of both joy and bitterness.
I’ve slowly realised that my love/hate relationship with Romance stems not from my mistrust of men but rather the mistrust I have of myself when it comes to romance.
Having once ”fallen in love”, I now don’t know how to distinguish between reality and the emotional and mental fantasy of my own mind. My “love” didn’t last, it was slightly delusional, and ended with me hurting a man whom I cared for. I didn’t do it in an awful way, it was just that it was a hard break up. We had been best friends and ending that after almost 2 years was hard. Heartbreaking hard.
So I lost my faith in the emotion of “love”.
I became distrusting of the feeling. I questioned the reality of the situation, and became bitter against it all. However, in all of this my love for romance held it’s place.
I love romantic comedies, and dramas, for they offer a beautiful picture of two people who end up caring deeply for one another, conquering the bad in life, and triumphing in love.
Disney taught me to hope. It taught me to hope that in all the misfortune there may be a prince who would rescue me. It taught me to carry on, not to let a bad situation get me down, but to rise to the challenge. It taught me to be a strong woman who could handle herself with class, but also be a domestic goddess. All of these are good things.
Disney did, however, also teach me that a beast of a man could be softened and changed; that bad witches got what they had coming; and that one day my prince would come. All things that may not be true.
My life isn’t full of misfortune, there is no evil witch who wants to put a curse on me or banish me. I do have that hope that my prince one day will come though. So I am left as a single woman, oscillating between wanting my independence for the rest of my earthly existence so I can have the freedom to do what I want, and the loneliness of coming home to an empty house and not having someone I can call on for tenderness and support.
And so I sit and watch romantic comedies, hoping for my faith in love to be restored, knowing all the time that it does not and cannot fulfill.
It doesn’t always offer that instantaneous comfort that a warm embrace does, but God’s love for me also doesn’t come with the anxiety of not knowing whether or not I was truly loved by the person embracing me. God’s embrace is what truly comforts, and endures to comfort me when I am lonely. The remembrance of the blessings he has given me in a wonderful family and terrific friends makes up for the moments of loneliness.
Still, it would be nice to meet my prince one day though. I’ll keep my eye out for him, but he can come find me, I’ll be keeping busy in the meantime trying my best to rise to the challenge of life, and be classy and a domestic goddess (although that one is the challenge I struggle with most I think!).
