Strange Love

The NYT featured two pieces on modern love that caught my attention this weekend, each surreal in their own way, and I'm starting with the good news. The first was in Weddings & Celebrations, the story of a couple who recognized love when they saw it, fortunate souls, and embraced it with alacrity and courage despite the obstacles that might have scared others away. FabGirl salutes you.

The other is almost exactly the opposite and more in the /too much information-slash-write what you know but maybe don't submit it to the paper of record/ vein of journalism. A woman, engaged and pregnant, with her fiancé on the opposite coast, enters into a local relationship with many of the same attributes of a "normal" relationship - dinners out, home repairs, communication breakdowns and make-ups. Not entirely surprisingly, Local quickly falls into the hitherto unknown (to me) category of "More than a Fill-In Boyfriend," as our author realizes that she "would have said we were falling in love, but it wasn't an appropriate time for me to be falling in love" (italics are mine). Confessional anyone?

There are fascinating, human doings afoot here. There's an apparent absence of intentionality on the part of our author or the FIB (natch), as in, oops, look at this relationship that has thrust itself upon us. I'm not saying that love is predictable/controllable/observant of circumstances, but there are giant shared blinders being worn here (where are the Stones when you need them - you can't always get what you want, anyone?). The lack of restraint/fairness/honesty between the two main players, never mind toward the far-off fiancé (who apparently still doesn't know what's going on, unless he read the Times yesterday), is audacious and doesn't bode particularly well for the local "relationship." If our author had really wanted to be with the fiancé, wouldn't she have been with him in the first place, and not across the country, pregnancy or no? Her explanation is that they're putting her career first, which then makes it a little hard to explain all the angst. If her career comes first, they've already made that choice, haven't they?

If the shoe were on the other foot, and her fiancé had a Fill-In Girlfriend (tee hee, FIG), well, never mind the bad, bad words we have for those women, ladies, or for the men either. She says it herself, "If my fiancé were hanging out in his city with a cute single woman, I would have killed him." Is the FIB just a glutton for punishment? I'm not sure how this is a) fun for him or b) anything other than an exercise in killing time. Our author makes no bones about her eventual return to the fiancé (although that relationship isn't exactly a fairytale either), and if he's making grand gestures, she doesn't tell. Perhaps they both just enjoy the drama of it all. Ultimately, it doesn't seem that either relationship is really worth having, and that just makes me sad, especially for her baby girl.

But that's not a great note on which to part, so let's remind ourselves not to settle for anything less than the real thing. Shoes that don't fit now won't fit later, sweetheart, and if they do, they'll be so ugly from the stretching you won't want them anyway.