Perhaps the single greatest upset to coupledom for a woman is waking up one day not soon after the headiness of new love has worn off and realizing the 'man' she fell asleep next to is, in actuality, just a well aged boy.
Hollywood (and Gregory Peck) packaged the illusion of contained, confident, romantic men who were able to tap in to their vulnerability while remaining impervious to irritation from the heroine's many foibles. And so we, or at least I, grew up with the unconscious expectation that, one day, all these boys would magically get it together and become suave, well-read, steadfast, and 'only-for-me-soft' men.
Here's how you spot the myth: hands up if 'a man' in your mind is always (and perpetually) older than you are now? When you were a child, 25 years old was 'a man', and when you hit 25 it was 40...
Don't get me wrong, this entry is not meant to be an indictment of 'boys'. Merely a call to women to wake up and realize that we are full of moulds we're expecting someone to fit! Sometimes we hide these behind 'my ideal man' or 'things I find attractive'. Boys/men are as complicated and subject to the accumulation of their experiences and expectations as we are.
In fact, imagine their shock when not soon after the headiness of new love has worn off they wake up and realize that the girl they fell asleep next to is, in fact, a (gasp) woman!
**Now I could go on about why the gasp is there, but that's a whole other blog entry and I don't have the kind of steam in me right now to deal pejorative understandings of 'woman'. Maybe next time...
