Faking It

"This is why I will never be completely satisfied by a woman, and this is why the kind of woman I tend to find attractive will never be satisfied by me. We will both measure our relationship against the prospect of fake love."

"I want fake love. but that's all I want, and that's why I can't have it."-Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

This is seriously one of my favorite topics to think about, write about or talk about. Fake love. I am fascinated with love. How people define in, the pursuit of it, sonnets, ballads...just about everything.

Now, I know I have only lived a paltry twenty-three years on this earth and that you might balk at me for thinking I know anything about love or relationships, but I swear to Pikachu that about twenty-one of those years have been used to brainwash me into wanting an unobtainable goal, LOVE. So..I admit to not being an authority, but I think we are all experts on this subject in our own ways.

I can trace back my longing for LOVE, the mind-blowing, earth-shattering, Prince Charming LOVE, to Disney and Barbie. I am not solely blaming popular culture for my current melancholy and spinster status, but I do think that pop culture sure did set me up.

Take for instance Barbie and Ken. Plastic people with an endearing LOVE. I remember watching commercials for their wedding back in the '80s and I remember my talking Barbie telling me about how she hopes Ken will call her. I remember Barbie's dream house. Basically I remember Barbie and Ken being a perfect couple who got married, rode horses together, enjoyed hanging out by their pool together, roller bladed together, and did freaking EVERYTHING TOGETHER.

Growing up I thought that true love meant doing everything together, spending every waking moment with the other person. I dreamed of finding my no-penis plastic man like Ken and doing all the fun stuff Barbie and Ken did. But...assessing this now, I could never handle being an extreme couple like this. I would lose myself and define myself by the "us" and I would get super annoyed of doing everything with my main squeeze.

Another example...Disney. I really do not need to expand on this...but seriously. Someday My Prince Will Come. So This Is Love. Once Upon a Dream. Beauty and the Beast. Obviously we all knew growing up that we would not happen to cross paths with a prince, but damn it if I did not think I would run into a super attractive male who within a second would fall in love with me and burst out into a romantic song of how he has waited his whole life for a woman like me.

As I got older my pop culture references and influences changed to movies and music. Same thing occurred. Daily I would encounter people meeting and falling in love. Yes, nothing was ever perfect, but these two-dimensional people and relationships set the pace for what I expected from my real three-dimensional relationships.

This is the reason I am writing this. Here is my confession:

I honestly thought when I was eighteen and getting ready to leave for college that I would fall in love with a tall, blue-eyed man who loved literature and be married at the age of twenty-four.

I can tell you right now that I will not be married by twenty-four. I do not even know if I will get married.

I just freaks me out that at one time I was sooooo sure that I could find someone so two-dimensional and that I would want that person. Like, I would think of all these qualities this person should possess and then POOF! he exists.

I know this post is kind of just me rambling, but it is important for the next post. For in the next post I will talk about my ultimate crush to end all crushes, Jablonski and the major role fake love has directly played in my love life.