Thursday, February 2, 2012

Mad About ...


It's time for Thursday's weekly Boyfriend post.

It’s not always easy.

I am not embarrassed to admit that many of my ideas about relationships were formed from watching TV and movies. For most of my adult life I held Mad About You to be the archetypal relationship. Now I am somewhat the same age as those characters (roughly) and in a happy relationship (not newlyweds, yet) and, shockingly, and despite my frequent observations that it is, my life is not a sitcom, it is nowhere close to being a sitcom. 
Or is it?

Media influences are a strong thing. I don’t wake up in the morning and think about whether or not I am going to act like Paul Reiser in regular fitting pants. Somehow it just happened. What really brought this home was a day last summer when I was getting a glass of water; there was a spill and the next thing I knew I was wiping it up with my shirt instead of a towel.

Am I unhappy about this? No, not at all because you take inspiration from what you can. A TV sitcom or your grandparents who have been together for 60 years - its all the same. Being inspired to work at making the relationship is what drives me and really is what should drive all of you. These things aren’t easy they take work. Not so much hard work, like building a house, but diligence and care, like raising a garden. You tend it daily give it what it needs to grow and it in turn gives you what you need to live.

In real life things don’t always resolve in a tidy 22 minutes. We face pressures we never expected. Life throws us into situations that we aren’t prepared to deal with. We live in a world that is unscripted and relationships are like gardens. That is what I have to say this week...

Photo: New Year's Eve revelry

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