The Idea of Him & Safely Married

If you let it, The Idea Of Him can be a dark force that nudges us into relationships that, like the Sally & Joe relationship in When Harry Met Sally, may not be really traumatizingly bad for us, but are serving only as placeholders and that are wasting everyone’s time.

See, Sally thinks she’s in a “Man Who Can’t Commit” relationship – they talk it out, and that’s as far as he can go. But what she was really in was a Man Who Refuses to Settle for a Safe Marriage relationship.

When Joe actually met the girl he wound up marrying, it happened fast; what’s difficult for us as women to wrap our minds around is, this is not an insult to Sally. Sally’s a bit Type-A; she’s wracked with remorse – if she had been lower maintenance, Joe would have married her, blah blah blah. Almost unconsciously, she sees it all as a competition that she lost.

Joe is the hero here. Well, and Sally. But especially Nora Ephron – she’s conceding a fault of smart women, but it’s a concession better to face and move forward – a certain percentage of these Men Who Can’t Commit relationship scenarios are actually Women Who Want To Have Been Right. With strong hints of I Don’t Want To Have To Start Over.

Women do this all the time, and in recent decades women have wasted the universe’s time with piteous appeals that men are soul-less and fickle, and it’s pretty dadgum brave of Nora to admit that sometimes girls are just in a hurry and that the boy was right to sideswipe Safely Married and hold out for Gloriously Married.

Keep following this blog, and we’ll get you Gloriously Married.

Is It True Love?

In When Harry Met Sally, Joe says it and does't really mean it, although he thinks he does. In About Last Night, Rob Lowe says it and means it, although he doesn't realize he does. In Rio Bravo, John Wayne doesn't say it, he says "You go out like that and I'll arrest you", but he means, I Love You, and Angie Dickinson knows it.

In Where The Boys Are, Dolores Hart says, "Unless you love me the way I love you..." and George Hamilton says, "I love you!" which you can see for yourself in the trailer for the movie:



They think that "I love you" is their trump card, the phrase that will invariably grant them entrance into our souls and bodies. And it sort of is. But how can you tell if the love they're offering is real, or if you are merely a conquest to them? Is it possible at all?

In 1959, Doris Day was able to make this distinction when rogue Rock Hudson actually proposed marriage, but those were more hopeful times. By the sixties, in Where the Boys Are, Yvette Mimieux seems to believe in a convoluted scheme in which the fact that a real Ivy League Boy actually shows up in her life and wants to sleep with her indicates true love. In the late seventies, I thought you could tell it was true love if his eyes actually, literally sparkled.

Since this is the basic question in all romantic relationships,I can't answer it completely here. Okay, I can't answer it completely anywhere, ever, and I don't have easy answers, either, like the sparkly eyes thing I personally had such high hopes for. Mostly, all I can do is to help point out the questions you should be asking yourself.

Keep reading and find out how to find your true love.


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