One room bedroom plus boyfriend?
I was recently getting up to date with a friend’s weblog, when I came across an entry which linked to an entry on the “best of craigslist.org” — One bedroom apartment plus boyfriend. Dria described the page as:
One of the most strangely romantic things I’ve read in a long time…especially the part about the ham sandwiches.
I could kinda see how it might be viewed as romantic; it certainly describes some of the attributes of a romantic relationship. But the part which struck me as being slightly creepy was that the author was writing about this in a completely generic manner. And to me, love is about wanting to making ham sandwiches, spending time talking to someone, etc., because of a connection I have with that person — and not some person in the generic.
Perhaps I’m overcompensating due to a tendency I’ve had in the past to “being in love with being in love”, as opposed to “being in love with the person that you’re with”. Maybe it’s just one of those “only in San Francisco; you East Coast people just don’t understand” things. Perhaps.
But I see it as a much more extreme example of why a lot of people get into a relationship; it’s because they want the benefits of coupledom, or because they’re lonely, or whatever. If they’re lucky, perhaps the couple will actually get to know each other better, and it will deepen to something much stronger. But if not, then sooner or later they’ll discover that they’ve been dating a fantasy, and the real person simply can’t live up to that fantasy. In most cases, that just (“just?” Hah!) means they’d have to take the emotional hit of the breakup. But in this case, they’d be stuck with each other for the duration of the lease!
On the other hand, if you don’t start with that bit of fantasy (with the attendant risk of running your heart through a meat-grinder), how else does a relationship get off the ground? Clearly some amount of risk-taking is a good thing, or else the only way people would hook up with each other would be in “When Harry Met Sally” scenarios, and stuff like that only happens in the movies. Yet signing a one-year lease for “a one-room bedroom plus boyfriend” seems like it’s more than a bit over the line (at least, over my personal comfort line, anyway).
So what’s the right level? I dunno. It’s an interesting question….