Death of a Fairytale
DEATH OF A FAIRYTALE
There was a time when I believed in true love, Prince Charming and the Knight in Shining Armor. A fairytale time when I savoured the idea of the sanctity of marriage. There was a time when the sight of an old married couple was something beautiful. Something to strive for, something to treasure. There was a time the sight of elderly lovers didn’t conjure up thoughts of second marriages, marriages to be endured and not lived, thoughts of desperate unhappiness or plain boredom. There was a time but that time has gone.
The time for reality has stepped firmly, resolutely, immovably into the space once reserved for romanticism and idealistic fantasies of forever love. Quite simply, survival and self preservation demands that idealism be abandoned for cynicism and suspicion. Not one of us is above suspicion, just as not one of us is above being suspicious. We are all prone to human failings, lust, flattery, debauchery, jealousy. Who can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt that their partner is completely and absolutely faithful? Completely and absolutely faithful! Right!. We may choose to believe the illusion of faithfulness. We may decide to view the world through rose tinted spectacles, choosing simply to ignore the facts that threaten to blind us. We may take the stance of ignorance being bliss. Oh, and it is bliss. Wonderful, stupid, ignorant bliss.
I look at the men around me and my shoulders sag in hopelessness. I feel lifeless, limp, wrung out. I am by no means a “male basher” but when witnessing what I do, when viewed from my perspective – that of a relatively okay-looking single forty-something – it takes every effort not to label and file men into the single