Cupids Dating Blog

In our culture, most of us attach a lot of importance to our romantic relationships, so maybe it makes sense that the search is so long. Sometimes, though, I worry that our expectations are linked a little too much to what we see in romance movies. I don't mean that we should lower our expectations and I don’t even mean that our ideals are unreasonable. It's just that we can't forget that those idealized conceptions of romance are esthetic imaginings. They compress all the important events and signs together in one production. It isn't that reality is less grand or beautiful, but only that it is more spread out, more mixed up with other things.

Generally speaking, I think I'm a pretty observant and attentive guy, but it's amazing what the human mind is capable of missing. Someone painted a huge, ugly piece of graffiti on the wall next to the entrance to my building. Almost a week afterward I was having dinner with some of my neighbors and one of them started complaining about the graffiti, to which I responded, "what graffiti?" Everyone laughed at me. I managed to miss something glaringly obvious even though I pass by more than once every day. This is a rather unfortunate choice of metaphor wherein I've compared romance to graffiti... but I hope it make my point clear. What I mean is that we get into routines and we only see what we consciously pay attention to, and a lot of other things get lost.

I think that sometimes we get caught up in the idea of a certain romance that we're after, or a certain idea of romance, and we miss all the good relationships that we could be building with the people that are already in our lives. I don't think there is a problem with the importance we place on romance in our live, or that we take the search for good relationships too seriously. I do, however, think that the search would be a little bit easier if we didn't expect what we're looking for to be so obvious. Subtle things are beautiful when you pay close attention.