there are no love stories like in the movies

I have a friend who still believes in love like in the movies. She dreams of passion that would last through decades, that would survive routine and babies and boredom and age, that would awaken sparkles in her eyes even ten, twenty, fifty years down the line. She believes in the happily ever after and she doesn't want to settle for less. Afterall, she's seen it happen. In "The Notebook."

Now last week, I acted in a short film. And it was a love story --like in the movies. I met the actor who I had to fall in love with at 7am Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon he was proposing on a beach with the sunset in the background. And the truth is when we were acting it out we kept laughing at how weird the whole situation was and how we felt like in a Mexican TV Series, but on screen it just looks like we're happy in love. I saw the footage and it looked so amazing that even I believed it for a second. And the entire film is condensed quick-shots of the evolution of a love that is born, grows, flickers and dies. It travels through time, skips through the boring parts, only shows the audience what they want to see. Think about all the moments of love you've had in you life. If you just edit them and add some amazing soundtrack and tie everything together, you've got your own film.

But there are no love stories like in the movies. In real life, love stories are only felt in glimpses, in moments captured in a sort of capsule that only last in our memories. Love is not perfect. It is not gentle, it is not kind, it is not forgiving. Love is a mess of passionate turns that leave you hanging on the edge of a cliff. It's a roller-coaster that goes up and down and sideways turns your life around and scares the shit out of you all the while giving you the greatest rush of your life.  

This year that I spent out of love was the best way for me to finally understand it. I recognize it now better than ever, and I've learned to appreciate it as what it is: discontinued and rough around the edges. Many a times, it doesn't come inside a wrapped-up package with a pretty bow. And I had a glimpse of it, I think. There's someone was in my life for years and every time I saw him my heart skipped a beat, but it was never good timing for us. And the truth is, I know deep down that if we had gone for it and tried being together, I wouldn't have been happy. But when I was with him for a glimpse of time, I know we had something special. If we had turned this glimpse into a relationship, then I'm afraid it would've spoiled it. So I chose to keep it special: Even now, I can close my eyes and always smile when I think of him, and I just appreciate it for what it is: a love story that could've been. 

the back-up plan

We're at that age now.
You know that time when you're about 16, and you start making the back-up plan to ensure you won't end up alone for the rest of your life? You don't actually think that you will ever really need to use a back-up... after all you're still a teenager and the world seems full of hopes and dreams that are about to come true, and you are one of those lucky ones who will surely find her great love. But you make the plan anyway, just to be on the safe side. You tell a friend or two that when you hit 28 (which we thought that was so old and far away) if none of you are attached, then you get married! And then you forget about it and only remember it at odd times when you want to laugh it off.
Then one day you wake up and you're 26. How did I get here so fast, I have no idea.
The other day, my sister witnessed a moment of sheer lunacy that has been stuck in my mind ever since she told me about it: My dad and a friend of his were talking, and the friend (a woman, in her early fifties) asks how old I am. He tells her, 26. And she says "Well! It's time to get her married!"
Notice how she says "get her married" as if it is a job for the general public. Oh my God, I'm at that age.
Already, when you hit 21, every time you're in the presence of a happily engaged couple or a newly married couple, or the ultimate worst, at a wedding, you hear the word "3abe'lik" a few dozen times. "3abe'lik," like your life's sole purpose should revolve around finding yourself that husband so that the world can rest and stop telling you that.
We're at that age when you look around at your friends and start speculating who will be the one to go first. Last year the poll would've probably pick me. The year before, it would've picked another couple who had been together six years. Now it seems that my back-up plan might be the first to go. How ironic is that?
Now we're at that age where the fear of ending up alone is kind of growing a little more. We're older now, seen what's out there, already have a friend of two with divorces of their resumes and your one serious relationship has gone to hell. It's a little scarier out there, I have to say. So you make new back-up plans. You and your gay best-friend decide to raise a child together at age 35. Or you and your girls decide you'll all live in a big house and adopt children from every country. You upped the age, of course, because you still want to give yourself a chance to find that shot at a nuclear family. But there's a slight chance the group of we-need-to-get-her-married parents are in for the shock of their lives.
Problem is, no one really wants the back-up plan. That's why it's called a back-up.
I've been accused of all kinds of things since I started writing this blog: angry, bitter, men-persecutor, revolted, negative, pessimistic... I've also very likely blown up all my chances of ever getting a man interested in me again... but even I can't help but hold on to the hope that I won't have to fall on the back-up. And even though the back-up plan might be a smarter-plan, I want the story you don't plan for at all.

the paradox of freedom

"Better a mistress than a wife." Coco Chanel


Anyone who's ever watched an episode of Mad Men would probably agree. Being the wife was so boring --sitting at home tumbling her thumbs, smoking cigarette after cigarette until her husband came home from work. And every husband had a mistress, or five. For the mistress, the husband would cut work in the middle of the day; he would actually communicate, share his thoughts, connect. For the mistress, the husband would unleash the passion. But for the wife... well, she got the sleepy, tired husband, who made her feel like coming home was like walking into a cage. Well, that's what I got from Mad Men anyway.

Then I watched "Coco," the movie, a couple of nights ago, and the man Coco Chanel is in love with is set to marry someone else. He says marriage is like a business deal, has nothing to do with love. And she says "better a mistress than a wife." Made me think. The wife represents the commitment, the settled life, the family. Boring. And the mistress is forbidden excitement, a daily escape, the adventure. All those words that seem to define men's needs.

So at the beginning of the 20th century, marriage was a social contract and love was to be found in the form of an extra-curricular activity. By the 60s, marriage was halfway between love and financial statements, and passionate sex was to be found in a variety of mistresses. And now there's a new century in the works and it's a little harder to define the terms. Maybe it's because now, we want it all: we want it to be love at first sight, passionate and enticing, but we also want it to be a calculated connection, with a check-list of culture, education, social class, religion and nationality. We want the love to be so strong we could live on bread and water, but we also want to ensure that chalet in Faqra or those trips to Paris twice a year for fashion week. We want the picture-perfect family, with the dog and the back-yard, but we also want the constant adventure and excitement and freedom of taking off with no strings attached. In today's world, we've become demanding, unforgiving, and uncompromising. If we don't get what we want, we bail, because we only live once and we want it all.

I guess that's the paradox of freedom. People paid with their lives for the choices we get to make today, and although freedom is a beautiful thing, it is also exhausting. How do you make the right choice? Do you go with rational, or do you go with instinct? Do you play it safe or take a chance?

Can you be the wife and the mistress?

The exception to the rule

I feel like writing silly again. Not that I don't enjoy pouring my heart-out and making people cry with my posts, but from time to time, I prefer to get back to funny rhapsodies about men and women and dating and playing and breaking hearts. Unfortunately, I've had very little material to work with lately. The Rats aren't being much of Rats, or at least they're not feeding my inspiration enough. And the girls, well all seems to be going well for most of them. Which is great, but makes poor blog-value.
But my friend Rebellious fell head over heals in love in the last two weeks, and I think that's worth a mention. There's been a lot of back and forth all year long, cuties, hotties, very cool guys, sometimes for months at a time, but something was lacking. And then, out of nowhere, and completely unexpected, she met Prince Charming. From the first moment they met, it felt different.
And that made me think: Yeah, I spent a lot of time talking about the game, being a bitch, following the "rules," deciphering what makes a love story work. But here's what I realize now: most of the time, when it's actually going to turn into a love story, it's very different from the start. So many times, when we're lonely, when we're looking, when we're almost desperately searching for the one, we meet lots of okay guys that we set-up in our heads as being great. We try to play the game, we ask our Rats what to write in this text message, how long to wait before calling back; then we analyze every other word he says with every other person we meet. And all it's such a big effort on our part and we don't even realize it. Because most of the time, you try too hard and it dies down because it wasn't even worth trying for in the beginning. When you meet someone whose okay, you should see it for what it is: a fling, a one night stand, maybe a few months of casual dating.
And once in a blue moon, you meet someone, and it clicks. There's instantly that notorious chemistry and it's always felt both ways. There's a different vibe to the flirting, it feels easier, more natural, and if there's a game being played, it's instinctive. When you meet that person, you're a lot more confident about the way he feels about you, because you feel it. No need to analyze and no need to think a million times before acting. It's effortless and it's wonderful.
It's the exception to the rule. And all the other times should be recognized for what they are, to avoid useless disappointment. We shouldn't settle for making the okay-guy great. We should be a little patient, and have a little faith. You know what they say: it always comes when least expected. 

till death do us part

Today would've been my parents' 27th wedding anniversary.
And I would like to honor that by writing about them in today's post. It makes sense: I write about relationships, and to me, they had the best kind of romantic relationship you could wish to have. It's true, I will never know if they would have stayed together had my mother not passed away, but it doesn't matter because it didn't happen.
So here's their story.
27 years ago like today, my parents stood in front of a mayor in Cyprus, and exchanged vows. They had a civil wedding because she was Sunni and he was Catholic, and Lebanon didn't allow that in 1984. It still doesn't.
It took a while before they got to exchange those vows. The first time my father saw my mother, he was 17, she was 18. He spotted her in front of a school, looked at her and thought: "this woman will be my wife." That's what he says anyway --but it's so cosmically romantic that I want to believe him. They only met several years later, through a friend in common, and started dating. They dated for 7 years before they got married. It was during the Lebanese civil war, Christians and Muslims were killing each other, and they were in love. You can imagine how my grandparents felt about their relationship. And so they left each other a few times, trying to comply with society's wishes... but they always got back. I once found a letter from my father to my mother, written during one of those times. He wrote "If you're not in my life, my life will never be complete. You are the one. There is nothing else I want."
It may seem futile --anyone can write these words. But do they? Writing a letter is already romantic enough. I barely ever got a greeting card from my ex --you know, the ones that already say everything for you, and you just sign underneath. Very personal indeed.
But the truth is, although beginnings are very important, the real test of love, I think, is what happens with time. A lot of couples start out madly in love, can't-live-without-each-other passion and whatnot. But they don't all stand the test of time. To me, the greatest proof of love are my parents. Not everyone can say that --in fact, many people around me would say the exact opposite. Our generation's phobia of commitment obviously comes from their parents' examples. And my hope for love obviously comes from mine.
10 years ago like today, my parents celebrated their last anniversary together. My mom had a brain tumor, lung cancer, and liver cancer; she had three months left to live; but she wanted to celebrate. She knew it would be the last time. She made me her accomplice. She rented a hotel room which we decorated with rose petals and balloons. She took my father for dinner at the hotel, and had the waiter bring the room key in stead of the check. My father blushed as if he was 18 years old. And it was just like when they were.

You know it's love when a man still wears his wedding ring ten years after his wife died --and wears hers on a chain around his neck. You know it's love when even "till death do us part," doesn't.

love-struck-silly

While it's true that we have to go through many disappointments (ref. "lonesome cowboy") to get that one good spark, when you actually get there, it makes it seem all worth it. There aren't many moments in your life that can quite match up to the feeling of a wonderful new beginning. You know, that time when you can't seem to stop smiling, even though your jaw starts to hurt? You wake up with a smile, you fall asleep with a smile, you catch yourself giggling because you just remembered something he said, and you feel love-struck-silly and it's the best.

It's those knots in your stomach --but the good kind. It's that can't-eat, can't-sleep, can't-help-but-being-cheesy, want-to-jump-up-and-down kind of stuff. And boys and girls alike, we all love it.

My friend Rebelious had that look a couple of days ago when I saw her. To be honest, she gets that look a lot, but who can blame her? I wish it was all beginnings, all the time --without the ending part. "Not all guys are assholes," she reminded me, with that gushy smile plastered across her face. I had forgotten.

Actually, there is no such thing as an asshole or a "good guy." The same guy has been one and the other, it just depends on the girl, situation, timing, and that whole complicated cosmic effect that makes two people either feel the spark --or not. Actually, when the guy feels the spark, he can be so much cheesier than a girl! Even one of the Rats, who will not be named even by nickname because he will kill me, had that beginning-blush not so long ago every time he mentioned this girl with who nothing even happened... she's the kind that could make him drop everything and runoff to some desert island and get married. He didn't use exactly these words, but it was something along those lines. He was love-struck-silly.

In the beginning, everything seems possible. The last time I felt that, my boyfriend and I were almost ready to get hitched within a month with not a care in the world. It's like when you're tipsy: you feel so happy you can't think of anything going wrong. And then eventually, you sober up. Reason starts to come back to you. You realize that you can't runoff to a desert island and it's not true that "all you need is love." All the annoying realities of life come into perspective, work, money, family, parents, religion, social class, culture... oh, and that temper of yours that had vanished eventually crawls back, and it's all a lot more complicated.

Beginnings are just amazing... and it's too bad they only last for so long. Once you transition into the this-is-a-real-relationship mode, all you ever do is try to get back to that tipsy feeling. Actually, the reason why you continue to make an effort when it's not all pink clouds and roses, when the other person seems to have lost their way, or you don't feel quite as special anymore, it is because you remember how good it felt when it first started. And you hope that maybe, tomorrow, you'll wake up with that smile plastered across your face, with that can't-eat bunch of knots in the pit of your stomach and want-to-jump-up-and-down kind of stuff.