Romance

Romance

1)      A feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love

2)      A quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life

This definition of the word “romance” was one I found when I googled the words “definition of romance”. It was a simple act, googling the words. But what I learned from it, and the experiences that have led up to me typing that phrase into a search engine in the first place, was anything but simple.

I came to the realization recently that sometimes, I hold people and things in my life to a standard that was set incorrectly. Standards set by Nicholas Sparks novels and Disney movies and my own imagination are out of the realm of reality. It’s never going to end well if you expect someone to uphold those standards. To expect a man to be Noah Calhoun (The Notebook) or Prince Charming, is unfair not only to them, but also to yourself.

We are human beings. You and I, we’re humans. We’re not Disney princesses, we’re not romanticized heroines who are perfect. We are flawed and we have imperfections and we have characteristics about ourselves that we don’t like.

Guess what?

The ones we fall in love with are human beings, too. They are flawed and have imperfections and have characteristics about themselves that they don’t like. They’re not Prince Charming, and they’re not romanticized, perfect heroes. They, like you, are human beings.

I realized in the last couple of days that I have been approaching the idea of romance in entirely the wrong way. Expecting other people to uphold my standard of romance, or my standard of anything, is like expecting them to be just like me. I wouldn’t want to date myself, and my guess is that neither do you. When I put it like that in my head, the concept was laughable.

Our differences make us the unique and beautiful individuals that we are. I personally fell in love with someone who is incredibly unique and sometimes overwhelmingly so. It’s something that I love about him, but I realized that I was unconsciously combatting that quality in him that I love so much, because I was expecting him to see romance the same way that I do.

As it turns out, he doesn’t. And what I realized is that I don’t really want him to. I thought I did, at first, but now I see that if I got what I thought I wanted, I would be creating the most boring relationship ever. The definition of romance that I found on Google highlights the air of mystery that comes with romance. If everyone we ever dated had the same idea of romance that we do, we would be eliminating all the mystery from our relationships.

Like I said, boring.

So what I’ve learned through all of this is that just because he doesn’t think the way you do, doesn’t mean it can’t be a good thing. I have to learn to let go of some of my preconceptions and accept some of the realities of the thing that is more beautiful than Disney movies: real life.

And maybe when I let go of some of those preconceptions, I’ll find that what fills the space is even better than I had imagined in the first place.