Fairy tales

"Once upon a time, the Princess met a Prince, they spent 2 hours together, fell in love, spent X time fighting against great odds, finally got together again and married. The end." You sighed, closed the book, wished you could fall in love like that and heard from the nearest adult, "Yes, it´s nice, but it´s not true."

Is it any wonder our notion of "falling in love" is so twisted?

When you are little, you usually have only two points of reference as to what falling in love is: your parents (and many of us sadly did not have a very good point there) and fairy tales.  If your parents are not a shining example of marital bliss and fairy tales are just not true, what else is there?

And we grow up, our hearts yearning for that one true love, our minds constantly reminding us that it does not exist. 

Did you ever stop to think that maybe neither extreme is true?

How it begins

You´re alone, again.  You wonder how you can feel so much relieved pain.  It was perfect at the beginning, isn´t it always?  Yet, here you are, just you. 

People will tell you the relationship ran its course, it was not meant to be.

Lies!  The problem is not the passage of time.  It´s in how you started. 

Are you still thinking in fairy tale terms? She a princess, he a white knight?  Are you still depending on pure emotion ("love at first sight"), instead of balancing heart and brain?  

You have them both for a purpose, you know?

How do I know it works?

You, like everybody else, may know more than one divorced couple.  There are countless marriage counselors and even more divorce-attorneys.  

You have to wonder if there is no way of avoiding this breakdown in personal relationships. What do successful couples have in common?

Ask around.  You will most likely find that they had a pretty well established notion of what they wanted in a partner.  Most importantly, they knew what they wouldn´t accept.  

This is what I call "the list".  It comes down to basically getting to ink and paper a list of qualities you find necessary in your mate and the defects you will not tolerate.

If this goes against your notion of love as an overshadowing emotion that renders your brain useless, bear in mind that choosing your life companion is much more than feeling "in love". It is about deciding, every day, to love the person you wake up to.

You have wonderful stories of great -and no so great- relationships.  Please post them, especially how you decided to get together with that person.