Cupids Dating Blog

The issue of who your love icons are might be something to think about when writing an online personals profile or even responding to one. Even when we sit down and describe exactly what we want in a relationship, there is still always room for ambiguity. It's not like love icons can all mean the same thing to all of us, but examples do tend to help clarify things.

I think the love icons a lot of people would hold up are pretty weird. The characters in a harlequin romance type novel tend to make me vomit a little bit. They are so far outside of the realm of reality that I don't know how to deal with them. Worse, the fantasies they promote seem kind of disturbing to me. They make a big show of having strong, independent characters, but invariably someone is in need of rescuing.

Ironically, I find the more troubled images of love come closer to what I would call healthy love icons. Take, for example, a movie called Before Sunset. The characters are rather bitter. I'm not really sure I even like them. I do, however, like the way they interact. I think style has a lot more to do with these things than anything else, I like the way the conversations in the film are serious and lighthearted in the same breath. It's a vague thing that I can't describe well, which is why I'm so happy for the example.

I don't know if there are many Jeanette Winterson fans out there, so maybe her books can't qualify as icons, but she wrote one novel called Written On The Body. If I remember right, the first line is "it's the cliches that cause all the problems." The book then sets about undermining every cliche about love that you can think of while being, at the same time, a very sincere love story. The point being, I think, that once you've understood what your ideals are, and how you relate to them, things become a lot clearer.

I believe that thinking about what our ideals are and being able to articulate those ideas, might help us all understand what we want from each other.