Archive for Prince Charming

Tangled Heart

Posted in relationships with tags , , , on November 27, 2010 by inretaliation

I took my girls to see the latest princess movie last night.  They loved it, they sat watching with rapt attention, sometimes with comments “I knew he was going to kiss her”.  Meanwhile I spent almost the entire movie cringing.  I used to love taking them to the movies.  It was such a treat watching them being amazed.

Princess fairy tales have caused nothing but grief in my relationships.  You believe in them because the brainwashing is consistent.  In every story the princess is in danger, her true love comes to save her, and they fall in love (quickly), happily ever after.  They are trying to make the princesses a little more self reliant these days, and in this one the hero is even a criminal.

Nobody lives happily ever after.  Every relationship takes work and dedication.  As women we need to stop expecting men to prove their love with grand gestures.  We need to stop expecting to be saved, and we need to stop trying to save.  We need to trust in ourselves to make ourselves happy.  I am not a feminist, at least not in the politically correct sense of the word.  I am merely trying to survive prince charming disease.  I think if we are genuinely happy with ourselves, we will be more genuinely happy in our relationships.

I want it to be easier for my girls.  I won’t stop taking them to the movies, in fact we are planning a trip to Disneyland next year.  I can’t let how I would like them to live their life get in the way of how they want to live their lives.  I might show them Kids when they are fourteen though.

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Love eternal?

Posted in relationships with tags , on February 18, 2009 by inretaliation

heart-headphonesI have been married for five years now.  We have been together for ten years.  I recently had a friend ask me how I knew things were going to work between us.  I told her very bluntly that I didn’t… still don’t.  As a matter of fact my husband and I had just been through a series of brutal arguments, and it had crossed my mind several times that we wouldn’t work things out.  

I have recently discovered that our relationship is cyclical.  We have a pattern.  The entire cycle takes around four months to play itself out.  We get along wonderfully for awhile.  Then there is about a week of picking at each other in which both of our moods slowly deteriorate as does our patience.  Then the fighting begins in earnest.  Sometimes we can work our way up and out of it.  Like swimming towards the surface of a murky lake after an especially deep dive.  Other times we drown in our refusal to give way.  Then it is another week of cold shoulders and withdrawn love.  Finally one of us realizes that we don’t have to kill our relationship in order to stand on principle. I can see how easy it is to forget how to love this other person, to believe that we really mean these small things we say to each other.  To cycle forever downwards until there is no surface any more.  What is more important, that we fight for what we want or that we give for what we want?

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