Romantic Love

Eva and Marina were doing their presentation and talking about the ideas of the prince charging in on his white steed coming to rescue the princess. "Some day my prince will come!" kind of thing, and how it is a lie. In Spain, they have a saying that everyone is a "media naranja" an orange-half and they're looking for their other half so that they can be complete. But Eva was like "We are not orange-halves. We are full people, and we shouldn't be living under the illusion that we need someone else to be complete. The idea of romantic love is a lie."

It's very interesting to me that they're spilling the beans about this myth to a bunch of teenagers. I'm not sure how much they'll believe her. I know when I was their age, or even like, 6 months ago, I wouldn't have believed her. I didn't want to believe her. But Eva was arguing that a lot of times women who are in violent relationships stay because they believe in this myth of romantic love. And that makes me sad.

But I definitely do agree that the idea of romantic love is a dangerous one. Take Twilight for example. One of my favorite things to argue about. Bella was living a passive ho-hum life until the day that Edward smelled her blood (aka stumbled in on his white horse and magically became obsessed with her) and through this and that they lived happily FOREVER after as immortal vampires. Young girls are reading these novels and watching these movies and they are just eating every little bit up. Of course they know that twilight isn't real because there are no such thing as vampires... but they don't realize that there's no such thing as an Edward. A Jacob is a little more believeable (because he actually likes Bella for who she is, not for something beyond her control.)

And finally, I wanted to talk about a shirt that Urban Outfitters is selling (but I found it cheaper on another website) from a brand called Married to the Mob, which seems to have a lot of shirts with statements about women and being sassy. I particularly like this one, and I think I will purchase it in the near future.

It finally makes sense to me that it really is what it is. "Romantic love was invented to manipulate women." I'm not sure if it was an incredibly deliberate invention, and probably occured over many generations of cultures, but it all seems to come down to the idea that women need to be passive and wait for a perfect man to come by, instead of working to find an equal partner who you work well with. Otherwise it's love-at-first-sight or "he's so dreamy" and there's not too much thought about how a relationship would really work.

I think I've finally personally been able to wrap my mind around this idea. And I'm glad. I will no longer be disappointed in relationships that aren't perfect or settle for less because I think that there's some stronger romantic attachment that outweighs a disfunctional relationship. Good deal. Also I think that shirt is really cute, too.