When I became suddenly single eight months ago, a female friend and local legend kindly took it upon herself to tell me exactly what I was now up against. "Dating sucks," she warned me. "It's awful out there. I've given up." I didn't doubt she was right because she'd been back on the market for a while at that point and knew the score and I didn't, having been absent from it for 6+ years.
Of course, while she was not trying, a great guy found her and she's now happily, if a tad warily, dating him, appreciating how much he appreciates her and enjoying it all. I am thrilled for her because she deserves it and because it gives me hope that I'll have a similar experience eventually. I'm the serial monogamist type, so not much for whole the dating scene.
I started thinking about all this because I went to see "Moonstruck" at the Bowtie today, a movie I hadn't seen since it opened in theaters in 1987. The plot about a woman close to settling for a man she didn't love instead of waiting for the right one was full of romantic hopefulness, for which I'm a sucker these days. But it was a speech by the Nicolas Cage character that really (moon) struck me:
"Love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess...We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and to love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed."
I'm not sure whether playwright John Patrick Shanley intended those words to encourage or discourage those still seeking true love. I can see taking them either way, but, for now, I'm going to allow myself to feel like anything is possible and I'm most likely to get lucky when I give up completely. My friend is proof of that.
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