Singles Life:
Instant romance gonna get you? Don't bet on it!
Dana Greene
April 25, 2008
Your eyes meet across a crowded room and lock instantly. She is the one you've been looking for your whole life. She is beautiful, charming, intelligent, professional, down-to-earth, with a lively sense of humor and an almost preternatural understanding of your needs as well as an unflagging desire to fulfill them without being obsequious.
We think they've fallen it love at first sight. But I repeat, it's not that! Love doesn't happen in an instant. It is a process and takes time. If we know this is so absurd, why does it hold such a prominent place in our imaginations?
The myth of romantic love finds expression in almost all of our popular music and especially film. Recently, I watched "Kate & Leopold" staring Meg Ryan. Not only did Ryan have to leave her wildly successful job for the man she loved, but she had to travel back a century as well. In another film called "The Sweetest Thing," Cameron Diaz falls hopelessly in love on the basis of a five-minute conversation in a crowded nightclub. Luckily, for her sake as well as for the sake of the film, her perfect stranger feels the same way.
Occasionally, such romances are unintentionally spooky. In a charming movie from a few years back called "Valley Girl," quasi-punk Nicholas Cage wins the heart of title character Deborah Foreman in a way that can only be described as stalking. When she goes to the movies, he's taking the tickets; when she dines out, he's the waiter; when she looks out her window at the night sky, he's sleeping on her front lawn. This can't be love.
Sociology professor Evan Edelson teaches about romance and the notion of love at first sight. "When I ask any classroom of at least 20 women if anyone has ever been stalked, at least five hands will go up. It's a strange world when romance becomes indistinguishable from psychosis," he said.
"No, this is not the way it works, and it hasn't worked that way either historically or cross-culturally," he added. The idea that love and marriage go together began in Western society only about 300 years ago. And in many places, marriage is still not practiced.
Students in Adelson's Sociology of the Family course heard one of his colleagues talk about her own arranged marriage. She met her Orthodox husband the week before the wedding. "Of course, the students approach the topic of arranged marriages as an abomination," Adelson said. "However, as they hear her describe how a marriage is not considered a union of two individuals, but rather two families, and they learn how families are carefully matched by occupation, social class, education level, caste, religion, politics, and the like, they start to think that maybe this isn't such a bad idea."
Certainly such a couple will have more in common than Meg Ryan and her 130-year-old husband had.
It is no wonder that finding something in common with a potential partner can be difficult. For some, the pursuit of higher education often takes us away from our families and neighborhoods. And still, the demands of a mobile labor market take us farther away. Perhaps the myth of love at first sight is there to reassure us that all of that doesn't really matter.
"All we need to look for in a lifelong partner is good dental work," Edelson joked. "On the other hand, living your life like a character on a movie screen is bound to make you, well, rather two-dimensional, don't you think?"
All singles have a story to tell. Some are funny, some are sad, and some are inspirational. And all give us a glimpse into the lives of today's Jewish singles. What's your story? You can contact "Single Situations" by email: danagreene1@yahoo.com.