I am Bridget Jones

“You just have to realize that life is not a romantic comedy.”

Someone said this to me recently. They felt that people don’t just follow their hearts in love and it was silly for me to think otherwise. There are factors, conditions, and other considerations. Love is not the end all be all and those other factors control relationships, not love.

I’ve been pondering the idea trying to decide if I agree.

To think this over, I first needed a reference point of true romantic comedies:*

Bridget Jones’ Diary

When Harry Met Sally

He’s Just Not That Into You

Love and Basketball

Sweet Home Alabama

How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days

Love Jones

Brown Sugar

Plot Overview Summary: Boy meets girl. Girl is slightly neurotic, but in a loveable “dressing on the side” kinda way that make her totally endearing. Things aren’t exactly right. Boy and girl go through some stuff, but they overcome. True love conquers all and they end up together in the end. Throw in a fake orgasm scene, a fight scene with yummy Hugh Grant, a nice but boring fiancé, and Hip Hop/poetry and there you have it.

If you ask me, it doesn’t seem to be all that complicated and sounds a lot like what happens in real life. Except for the yummy Hugh Grant part. I keep looking for him in my office so I can sashay by in my short skirt but he seems to be away on leave; indefinitely.

But other than that, people go through those things. They make up, they break up, they chase the wrong girl, say stupid stuff, and fall in stupid foolish total love. So my question is: Why do we make life more complicated than a romantic comedy? Why don’t we all just put it on the line like Bridget Jones and follow our hearts?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand: there are factors in relationships. None of those movies have a “Whose turn is it to do the laundry?” scene. Or a 2 am “My ass was just in the toilet AGAIN because you left the seat up. I swear to God I will stab you in your sleep if you do it again” scene. Those things are part of relationships and you have to be able to work them out. But that is life. And it isn’t unique to romantic relationships. So what is wrong with following your heart with the understanding that regardless of who you love or how hard you love them, you will have to take out the garbage? I don’t see why you would let the fact that the garbage has to go out be your driving force.

I think I can trace the difference in our views of real life verses the romantic comedy back to the moment where someone puts their heart on the pavement to fight for what they really want. The “I’ll play for your heart” in Love and Basketball. The “When did you fall in love with hip hop” in Brown Sugar. And I’m starting to think that if you don’t stand up in that moment when it happens and fight, you just miss it. There is something about the passion of the fight against all odds and reason that separates the RoCom from real life. If you miss the moment, you likely miss out on your happily ever after. And you still have to take out the garbage.

Now let's be clear, I hear the argument that lasting relationships are not based on that love alone. That it fades, and you have to fall back on the responsibilities and friendship to make a relationship last. But when I hear people say that I often believe they are talking about lust not love. No, wanting to ravish a person every time you see them will not make for a 30-year long marriage. (But it might get you solidly through the first 5 years if you do it right *wink*).

But are you closer to that 30-year marker if you ration out your heart in pursuing your relationships? There is something to be said for not trying to control your emotions and following them. Like Matthew McConaughey chasing after Kate Hudson on the Brooklyn Bridge on his motorbike. You may not get the girl. But it seems to me the alternative is just as bad. And there is the chance that you will get the girl. And she already knows that you were a player before you met her and loves you anyway.

Something about letting that passion lead just might be exactly the answer to making relationships last. Because that passion is you. The real you. And the object of your affection is getting something real, in all of its intensity. I hear about so many relationships that end after the muted “representative” of a person goes away. That moment when people finally put themselves out there and their mate (months or years later) is forced to deal with the real person that they have never seen before who has appeared. I say you jump all in and follow your heart from the start and be real. It might not make every relationship work. But the ones that do will have that real staying power.

I’m even more certain now that I was before that for some people life is a romantic comedy. Just like I know there are rich people even though my bank account doesn’t show it. Some people do follow their hearts and find true love like Bridget Jones. If you don’t believe they really exist, it just means you aren’t one of them.

Yet.

But if you are the person who is hiding yummy Hugh Grant at your office, give me a ring. We should do lunch. I have just the right outfit.

Your hopelessly romantic BCG

* If you have not seen any of these movies call/message me now and we will make a weekend out of it. Because you are seriously missing out of you haven’t laughed at Reese Witherspoon punching Candace Bergen in the face with a Southern accent.

Travel Light

Love was so much easier when we were young. Boy meets girl, he pulls her ponytail, chases her around the playground; she likes him back. They hold hands in the hallway, eat lunch together, and pass notes when they should be learning algebra. The note gets folded into a cute triangle; that should count for something in geometry, right?

Things start to get very complicated after that. People get into relationships that don’t work with people that disappoint them and it hurts. Getting over the hurt is not easy. Some hold onto the hurt, package it up, and carry it into every new romantic experience.

Baggage.

Some people have a little bit of baggage; like that clear liquids bag you can carry onto the plane. But others have lots of it. Not cute matched Louie V luggage sets where everything has its own compartment and stays in place. Nope, folks walk around with overfilled plastic bags, ripped garbage bags, and rolling suitcases with busted wheels full of old hurts, the mistakes of others, and unrealized expectations. The bags piles up around them, falling onto the floor in the most inopportune times making it impossible get close to them without tripping over something.

Many walk around with the bags for so long; they don’t even realize anymore when stuff falls out of them.

There you are, having a quite dinner at a new trendy restaurant. You’re gazing into each others eyes, laughing, joking, and smiling. Your hands touch in the middle of the table, he looks at you and you think he will say something cute and flirty. You’re waiting in anticipation, and then the waiter comes by to see if you want chocolate lava cake or Italian cream pastry for desert.

You have been looking forward to the lave cake from the moment he recommended the restaurant and you looked up the menu online. But your date’s face gets tight, his expression gets cross, and he says no one is interested in desert and sends the waiter off.

BAM!

After the waiter leaves, one of the bags explodes on the table onto the floor and you spend an hour explaining how you personally have never sleep with your boyfriend’s best friend while he was on a business trip in Italy. So although you realize how hard that was, you don’t actually think it will be a problem for the two of you.

“Are you going to Italy any time soon?” You ask; wondering why this needs to be discussed in lue of chocolate lava cake.

“You’re missing the point. I don’t want to make the same mistakes again, I have to learn from my past.”

So there you are.

No lava cake for you. You’re sitting at the table, exhaustedly wondering how many other conversations like this you will need to have to prove you aren’t her. Conversations about mistakes you have never made and will never make, but obviously have and impact on your budding relationship.

Last week you spent hours talking about your views on pet custody. How IF you moved in together, and IF you decided to get a miniature Snouser together, and IF you broke up, would you let him see the dog for visits. That was a frustrating conversation, but there was no chocolate lava cake involved, so you grinned and created a supportive position to this hypothetic dilemma.

The problem is, although you aren’t perfect (OK, you’re really, really far from perfect) the two of you have not gotten to discuss your mistakes and shortcomings. You’re still defending yourself against someone else’s whacked out mistakes and you spend a lot of time explaining that you are not that person rather than showing who YOU truly are.

Its hard, this love thing. It can be beautiful, strong ,and lasting. But if you throw all of those bags on top of it while it’s just a sapling, it will be dead before it had a chance to grow.

Sadly, many waste emotions on people who think it’s OK to do outlandish things, and as a result are guarded against the real possibilities. Like our friend at the restaurant who just wanted to get to know this new exciting guy. Well, get to know him and try that chocolate lava cake.

Your BCG girl - unpacking

Thinking for the Holidays

Someone asked me to write my next blog on being alone for the holidays.

At first, I thought he was being silly and short sighted. Everyone has their family and friends that love them. Even if you aren’t in a relationship, I’m quiet certain you are far from alone.

Then the blizzard hit.

2 days stuck in the house. Christmas love stories are on every channel and work has slowed to a halt as people power down until the New Year.

It’s enough to make you loose your mind.

I’m one of those girls who are always busy. I fill every minute of every day with every thing. My “to do list” is my guide and I find satisfaction in checking things off that list. Life moves quickly and constantly; a convenient by-product is that staying busy means I don’t get many moments where I have to confront what I am choosing not to focus on.

Like a relationship.

I don’t make time find answers to these questions: Is a relationship important or not? Do I want to try and work towards one? Am I being hard on the guys I have dated recently? Should give them more of a chance? Have I walked away from something great?

I just keep moving. I assume that what I say I’m looking for really does exists somewhere and I will find it when I’m supposed. That I shouldn’t just try to make it work with someone I don’t feel a connection to. In the mean time, checking the boxes on my list is much more fulfilling than pondering these really hard questions that have speculations and no real answers.

And then I got snowed in.

No work to distract me, no clients calling for reports. I’ve wrapped all of my gifts and washed all my clothes. I’ve watched 8 movies and it is still 4 hours earlier than I ever go to bed on a Saturday night.

What am I supposed to do now?

It’s the stillness that makes it tough for people to be single during these months. Your world slows to a halt. It allows you time to think. It forces you to think. You realize that in some areas of your life, you are a rock star. In others, you are no further along then you were when you moved out of your parents’ house those many years ago.

And oh yeah!! THAT is right around the corner. The family dinners where they try very hard to pretend they understand why you are still single. Pretend they understand why you needed that next promotion, that second or third degree, or whatever it is you have focused on that keeps you from figuring out the love thing. They pretend that they get why that last guy wasn’t the one; and the truth is they don’t. They want to understand, because they love you. They want you to be happy, and they just don’t believe you are.

Add in a few sappy Christmas romances and those “Every Kiss begins with K” commercials and its enough to make you pull your hair out while you question all of the choices you made throughout the first 11 months of the year.

So to my friend, I’m sorry I pre-judged you. I was too busy checking off boxes to realize how much many of us can empathize with you.

We will find love when its right and it shouldn’t be seasonally motivated. Don’t let Zale’s convince you it has to be this month. In solidarity, I’m going to go erase all of the numbers in my phone for the “maybe I should give him another chance, he wasn’t THAT bad” guys. There might be several more hours before its safe to drive, and I don’t want to be tempted to give them another chance I wouldn’t even consider in the sunshine of April.

And don’t worry, Martin Luther King’s Day is right around the corner; it seems that the world goes back to normal then...

- Your BCG Snow Angel

Happiness does not equal raw eggs and flour

A woman I went to college with was featured today in the Washington Post for her upcoming novel “Bitch is the New Black.” Tickled to see someone I know in the news, I started googling to get the full story. While I’m excited by the concept of the book the way she describes herself it in the video interview gave me pause – because it’s something I’ve heard a lot.

She said “I’m a successful black woman” several times, listed off the things that validated the statement, and then says she isn’t happy. I know many women who describe themselves this way, and they too end up in that same place at the end of the sentence. “I’m a successful black woman, why can’t I find love or happiness?”

It might be worth while to go back to the beginning of the sentence and see where we made a wrong turn.

What is success? I’ve heard it described a number of ways: having a degree (or two), a house, a car, a job, the right clothes, and/or invites to the right parties. Some women define it as beginning married or having a child. But in many cases, all of this “success” is not accompanied with happiness.

If what you want is happiness, then are you really successful without it?

Someone along the way told us the work is done once you get the tools. We want a cake - so we get the eggs, sugar, and the flour…. but we leave them on the counter and go get ready for the club. We go out, drink, dance, have a good time, and wonder why we don’t have a cake with cute rose petal frosting details when we get back. We want the results but have not done the work.

Since we as women, of any color, were not allowed to get the tools before, we have come to see these as important markers. Getting the degrees, the job, our own things, are accomplishments we should be proud of. But they are not the end of the road. The sacrifice, the balance, the compromise of giving outside of ourselves in a relationship, for our career, or for our children, that’s a whole different thing.

We have been allowed to say “no thanks” to the parts that are hard, so we do. We shun being in relationships that are not “worthy of us” and turn our noses up at anything that falls short of our fabulous definitions. We are not our mother or grandmothers. We have tools and tools equal options. We have the option of only investing in what we want, and not settling for less. And we hold onto our options like badges of honor and wear them like a shield against being mediocre and common. We pat ourselves on the back for not having to slave like our for-mothers did, and yet wonder why we are all alone.

But what we are realizing is that our mothers and their mothers were not sacrificing because they were less fabulous than we are. It was something different. And to find our own happiness, we will have to see some parts of them in ourselves.

Many of us have the ingredients for happiness, but have not actually started baking. We haven’t gotten to the hard part of what true happiness is, and wonder where our “happiness prize” is.

But, happiness is not an entitlement. It is the result of soul searching, giving, and loving. It is the byproduct of risks taken and challenges overcome. It is opening yourself and your heart to finding something that really matters -what ever that is– and committing yourself to it fully. If that is a job, a child, or a husband --- you get back what you put out.

Let me be honest - that first cake you make is going to suck. You are gonna mess it up somehow. But don’t be discouraged. Try again and again until you figure it out. You’ll know you have the right recipe when you think it’s perfect and the first thing you want to do is cut the first slice for someone else.