blissful Category: Romance and Relationships
Ok, so I confess, I watched it again tonight (for like the 7th time) and I finally realized why it is my favorite movie. No, it's not the drama or the romance, or the really good looking Mr. Darcy... It's the purity and the innocence of the love relationships it portrays... Even though I haven't read the book, which I imagine goes into greater detail of the progression of the relationships, I think I have a fairly good picture of how Jane and Lizzy's romances unfolded. I do realize that this story is fiction, nevertheless, it does draw a somewhat accurate representation of how love, relationships and marriage were approached at that time period.
Someone called me old fashioned the other day. I corrected them, saying that I was proper. I believe in the principle of things. I believe that for most things in life (big things) there is a right way and a wrong way and I believe that these ways are absolute, black and white with no grey areas to ponder. I believe in mind over matter. Wisdom over emotions. My emotions do not rule over me (not for long anyway :P), my conscience does. I am not an "idealist" nor am I naive... I have enough experience to know what works and what doesn't and enough knowledge of the truth to be free not to repeat the same old mistakes (for the most part). However, call me pure and innocent and I'll take that as the greatest compliment :)
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time period... I look back at a time in history when feelings were only viewed as genuine if they were backed up by a commitment. When marriage was the only committed relationship there was and real love was tested by the best test: time. When there was no such thing as casual dating and casual sex. When you barely touched and only held hands during dancing. When you didn't kiss while courting and sexual intimacy before marriage was out of the question. Old fashioned? Well, if you consider relationships that were built on commitment instead of fickle feelings and urges that come and go as they please old fashioned, then yes.
Last week one of my coworkers tried telling me that it was ok for him to sleep with his girlfriend because they were in a committed relationship. So I asked him that without a ring on his finger, what prevented him from deciding to end that relationship and go sleep with someone else because they were "better"? But I guess these days even a wedding band doesn't prevent people from doing just that. Someone else told me that before they commit to marriage they want to totally "test out" the product, meaning do everything including living together before making it official. Their reasoning was that you had to make sure you had good sexual chemistry before making that big of a commitment. That's funny, because Jane and Lizzy weren't worried about it and neither am I... I don't want someone to love me based on our sexual chemistry. That's not love, it's lust. Don't get me wrong, I think that that aspect of the relationship is extremely important and that's why you'll have the rest of your lives together to work on it and perfect it :)
When did it become ok to reduce marriage to a couple of rings and a signed piece of paper? Is that all it means now? How can we expect people to commit to one person for the rest of their life when young people are encouraged to date around, sleep around and enjoy all the benefits of marriage without any of the commitment? How can marriage even be valued when instant gratification is everything and casual short terms relationships are the norm? How can people learn to endure the sacrifices of marriage and looking out for the other person's best interest when the society only promotes staying in a relationships while it feels good and you're happy with your partner. That's not a commitment, it's a game. Even sports get more commitment than that from their players.
Bottom line... when you buy a house, something that costs a lot of money, a place that you will make a commitment to for a large part of your life and plan to make a home of, you're not going to buy a house whose real estate agent didn't take care of, right? As a real estate agent you can't just let all prospective or interested buyers "try out" the house in any way they want. You can't let people live in the house, use all of its utilities and get all of its benefits just because they want to make sure everything is to their liking before they make the commitment to buy it. If that was the case, and prospective buyers kept moving in and out of that house, it wouldn't be long before that would take a toll on the house and it would start to get damaged and messy... People generally only need to look at the house for a limited amount of time before they make that commitment. The main reason being because they already know what they are looking for. Don’t go looking and shopping when you don’t even know what you want/need because that means that you are not ready to buy. Meanwhile, you might be messing up somebody’s future house in the process. Buying is different from renting. Renters move in and out for selfish reasons and don't care about the house. Buyers make an investment that they know will increase in value over the years and put in the time and money to fix the problems instead of moving out. I am (and you are) a lot more valuable than a house and require a much greater commitment.
I want the innocence, I want the purity, I want the beauty of being in a relationship that is willing to wait. I want the best there is :) and I’m not going to settle for anything less...
Someone called me old fashioned the other day. I corrected them, saying that I was proper. I believe in the principle of things. I believe that for most things in life (big things) there is a right way and a wrong way and I believe that these ways are absolute, black and white with no grey areas to ponder. I believe in mind over matter. Wisdom over emotions. My emotions do not rule over me (not for long anyway :P), my conscience does. I am not an "idealist" nor am I naive... I have enough experience to know what works and what doesn't and enough knowledge of the truth to be free not to repeat the same old mistakes (for the most part). However, call me pure and innocent and I'll take that as the greatest compliment :)
Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong time period... I look back at a time in history when feelings were only viewed as genuine if they were backed up by a commitment. When marriage was the only committed relationship there was and real love was tested by the best test: time. When there was no such thing as casual dating and casual sex. When you barely touched and only held hands during dancing. When you didn't kiss while courting and sexual intimacy before marriage was out of the question. Old fashioned? Well, if you consider relationships that were built on commitment instead of fickle feelings and urges that come and go as they please old fashioned, then yes.
Last week one of my coworkers tried telling me that it was ok for him to sleep with his girlfriend because they were in a committed relationship. So I asked him that without a ring on his finger, what prevented him from deciding to end that relationship and go sleep with someone else because they were "better"? But I guess these days even a wedding band doesn't prevent people from doing just that. Someone else told me that before they commit to marriage they want to totally "test out" the product, meaning do everything including living together before making it official. Their reasoning was that you had to make sure you had good sexual chemistry before making that big of a commitment. That's funny, because Jane and Lizzy weren't worried about it and neither am I... I don't want someone to love me based on our sexual chemistry. That's not love, it's lust. Don't get me wrong, I think that that aspect of the relationship is extremely important and that's why you'll have the rest of your lives together to work on it and perfect it :)
When did it become ok to reduce marriage to a couple of rings and a signed piece of paper? Is that all it means now? How can we expect people to commit to one person for the rest of their life when young people are encouraged to date around, sleep around and enjoy all the benefits of marriage without any of the commitment? How can marriage even be valued when instant gratification is everything and casual short terms relationships are the norm? How can people learn to endure the sacrifices of marriage and looking out for the other person's best interest when the society only promotes staying in a relationships while it feels good and you're happy with your partner. That's not a commitment, it's a game. Even sports get more commitment than that from their players.
Bottom line... when you buy a house, something that costs a lot of money, a place that you will make a commitment to for a large part of your life and plan to make a home of, you're not going to buy a house whose real estate agent didn't take care of, right? As a real estate agent you can't just let all prospective or interested buyers "try out" the house in any way they want. You can't let people live in the house, use all of its utilities and get all of its benefits just because they want to make sure everything is to their liking before they make the commitment to buy it. If that was the case, and prospective buyers kept moving in and out of that house, it wouldn't be long before that would take a toll on the house and it would start to get damaged and messy... People generally only need to look at the house for a limited amount of time before they make that commitment. The main reason being because they already know what they are looking for. Don’t go looking and shopping when you don’t even know what you want/need because that means that you are not ready to buy. Meanwhile, you might be messing up somebody’s future house in the process. Buying is different from renting. Renters move in and out for selfish reasons and don't care about the house. Buyers make an investment that they know will increase in value over the years and put in the time and money to fix the problems instead of moving out. I am (and you are) a lot more valuable than a house and require a much greater commitment.
I want the innocence, I want the purity, I want the beauty of being in a relationship that is willing to wait. I want the best there is :) and I’m not going to settle for anything less...
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1 comment:
"Anna....I love, love, LOooovvee you!!" Haha LOL!
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