What Does Happily Ever After Really Mean?

When I was 12 years old, I had a plan.  I was certain that by the time I was 25 I would be married to the love of my life, progeny number one would be on the way, and I would be on my way to the storybook ending I deserved.  That’s what I was taught to believe anyway, and my parents made it all look so easy.  What I know now that I didn’t know then, was that my parents (who are still disgustingly married after 34 years) got lucky!

Around age 27, after yet another heartbreak, a million bad first and sometimes second dates, more one night stands then I’d like to count, and a couple of attempts at serious relationships that in retrospect were probably doomed from the beginning…I woke up.  I woke up to the realization that I was going to have to come up with a plan B, because this one obviously-was stupid.  The elusive Prince Charming was NOT coming to rescue me anytime soon. 

I was on my own.

Let’s fast forward to present day (age 32 closing in on 33), where I have a decent job, I’m educated, I own a home, a couple of cats I’ve managed to keep alive, and I did it all on my own.  I’m relatively attractive by most standards, confident, witty, and smart with very little emotional baggage…so you might ask how is it that no man has managed to trick me into the sanctity of marriage?  That’s easy, because I have once again found myself in an “it’s complicated” relationship status.  Ridiculous.  I know.

So why do I put myself through this torture?  Maybe I’m just a glutton for punishment.

I’ve never been one to easily give up on anything, including relationships.  Call it a personality defect I guess.  So when my ex-boyfriend, we’ll call him D (who I moved all the way to NYC for last year…that’s another story) decided that he had made a huge mistake by ending our 9 month relationship and wanted to try and work things out, my first instinct was no F-ing way!  But in the back of my head there was this voice, which turned out to be my mother’s, saying “relationships take work” over and over again with an annoying persistence.  I started to wonder if maybe I should listen to what he had to say.  Had I given up too easily?    

Gradually, I started not being a bitch when D would text or call me, and eventually he persuaded me to give this relationship another shot.  After all, hating him had started to become exhausting.  But first, let’s add just a little more absurdity to the story shall we?  He recently moved from NYC to Houston, TX, I live approximately 1,300 miles away.  How is this ever going to work?  Can it work?  Should it work? 

The future of our relationship remains to be seen.