Love Is The Answer = Myth, Peril and Prison

“All you need is love.”

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“Good girls love bad boys.”

Combine these hackneyed platitudes with everyday women turned princess, the biggest party you’ll ever host, gowns with handmade lace trains and the social pressure to be coupled and you, too, will believe the hype. It’s almost impossible not to. But I’m here to tell you, stepping out in the peak of wedding season, that love is never The Answer.

The myth of love as the answer starts for many of us with fairy tales. A pretty damsel needs help. A willing, ripped guy shows up at the right moment and voila! She is saved, he scores a cutie and the day ends with Pachebel’s Canon in D Major. It’s a story we all know and that many hope for. Of course we do. We are suckers for a happy ending. We have a bias toward perfection. And when you add those two together, love becomes the answer. But this math cannot be counted on. Perfection and happy endings are only stories.

If you are someone in the early days with your boo, you may be tempted to scoff and click away. Wait. I get you. The sex is juicy and reality seems better than any dream. It’s well before dogs, children, lube and loss. It feels like there couldn’t be any other real reason for everything, except love. I remember that. I’ve been there too.

But things will get hard.

People change.