The Year of No Nonsense by Meredith Atwood

Author:Meredith Atwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

ROMANCE IS DEAD

Lately I see a new romantic pressure to seek (and find) amazing, soul-moving, Life-fulfilling, romantic and sexual love that—like the theory of blissful Happiness—we all deserve.

Soulmates.*

Some idea is swirling that our ultimate needs should be met, catered to, and fulfilled by our soulmate, one special person made for us to fill this hole in our soul.

Translation: We are looking for one person to fulfill our deepest needs and inadequacies.

Reality: Who in the world can do that? Poor bastard. No pressure, Bud or Babe.

It’s no wonder that it feels like relationships are splitting up these days and everyone is cheating on everyone. Of course, that’s not true—not everyone is doing anything. But I listened to an interesting TED talk with Esther Perel, who breaks down what infidelity might actually be about.

“Because of this romantic ideal, we are relying on our partner’s fidelity with a unique fervor. But we also have never been more inclined to stray, and not because we have new desires today [as opposed to years ago], but [rather] because we live in an era where we feel that we are entitled to pursue our desires, because this is the culture where ‘I deserve to be happy.’”2

Ah ha, sounds familiar doesn’t it.

A successful romantic relationship, when you see that mystical, rare creature, consists of two people who stand alone first, as individuals, and then together as a couple. We need to be a stand-alone person, firing on all (or most) cylinders, before we can be anything valuable to anyone else. Many of us have relied on someone else for our validation, existence, and Happiness for much of our Life. If it was our parents’ love and attention, that could have been devastating—depending on the appropriate or inappropriate parental roles. If the parents crossed any sort of boundaries in raising you, then likely you get to enjoy a series of issues in romantic relationships. Or, we are looking to heal the dark parental wound, and looking for saving in romantic love. It starts out good, but no one can actually fill that role—not completely.

When someone “fails” us, we then blame them and break up our families for it. And maybe divorce or Splitsville is the complete, 100 percent right call for some relationships. Your Truth Onion might validate that choice fully. No judgments here whatsofreakingever.

But we should not be seeking fulfillment in our own Lives from someone else. Someone else can be the whipped cream and cherry on our banana split sundae. They can be the nuts (or have the nuts). But they cannot be the ice cream. The ice cream is what matters most in the sundae. Without the ice cream, it’s just a banana with some whipped cream. You are the damn ice cream.

The handful of times my marriage was rocky (translation: damn near almost ended) had almost everything to do with me and very little to do with my husband.

But “He isn’t doing x, y, and z!” I was screaming in my head.

No, no he wasn’t.

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