For me, this article shed an
entirely new light on dating and relationships. I’d honestly never looked on marriage as anything but a
partnership with a soul mate. When
you find someone that you have this special, deep connection with, and you just
know. That’s when
you get married. This person
should know everything about you.
He should know all of your little quirks. He should always know what to say to cheer you up and how to
make you laugh and what to do when you cry. I’ve always taken that idea for
granted, I suppose. It’s something happy to look forward to. One day, you meet a perfect, wonderful
boy who absolutely adores you[1]
and you fall in love and get married and live happily ever after. I’m not even kidding…I just sort of
assumed that’s how everything would eventually work out for me. That’s probably
bad.
Ingrid Michaelson describes the little intricacies of a
perfect relationship, even simply the most mundane aspects of it, in her song
“The Way I Am.” “Cause I love the
way you say good morning. And you
take me the way I am.” That’s
simple, but affecting. It creates
a wonderful image, something that I’d love to have if I get married. And I think I could too, because it’s
realistic. Ingrid is good at
singing about these simple, but beautiful aspects of relationships. She does this again in her song “You
and I.” Set only to a ukulele, she
sings with a partner, “You might be a bit confused, and you might be a little
bit bruised but baby how we spoon like no one else. So I will help you read those books, if you will soothe my
worried looks, and we will put the lonesome on the shelf.” So cute, right?!?
Many of the love songs that are popular today try far too
hard to be “romantic.” This
happens to the point where the actual emotional impact and relate ability of
the songs are diminished significantly.
Taylor Swift is a big offender here. “Love Story” is a prime
example. “We were both young when
I first saw, close my eyes and let the flashbacks start. You’re standing there, in the balcony
in summer air. See the lights, see
the party, the ball gowns. See you
make your way through the crowds to say hello. Little did I know….”
Ugh. Please.
But I digress. Anyway. Basically the article made me think, for the first time
ever, that some people are happily married not
to their soul mates. In other
words, you don’t have to marry a “soul mate” to have a good marriage. I guess this must be true. And I suppose it’s a good point that
constantly searching for this perfect “soul mate” could hold one back. But to me it still sounds like settling
to me, at least the way the article described it. And that makes me sad to think that some people do
that. But perhaps I’m being far
too romantic.
Still, for a marriage to be
successful, there must be a basis of some sort of love. And whether that is an all-consuming,
head over heels love, or a more practical, mature, controlled love, I suppose
it doesn’t matter. Love, in the
end, is love. In the words of Jean
Val Jean, during the finale of the musical Les
Miserables, “to love another person is to see the face of God.”
[1] Dave Matthews Band’s song
“Crush” is a good example of a boy (or in this case, man I guess) loving a girl
in the most adorable, perfect, soul-mateish way ever. “I will treat you sweetly. Adore you, I mean, you crush me . . . It’s crazy I’m
thinking, just as long as you’re around, and here I’ll be dancing on the ground.
Am I right side up, or right side down?”
Seriously if a boy ever though that about me I’d just die.
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