"Wait for me, I'm coming." -Jane Eyre
Recently I went on a casual date, just drinks and hanging out. The guy was perfectly nice, a total gentleman, good looking, interesting... Should have been the whole package, but I felt absolutely nothing. I left thinking: wow that would have been great had I been attracted any least little bit.
And why wasn't I? *Sigh* I wish I could explain what intangible quality grabs my interest. One would think that after such a dry dating spell I would be desperate for anything even near the realm of attractive. I mean, it has been nearly a year since I have dated. In the meantime, I watch romantic movies and pretend that I will find someone with whom I feel actual passion. Well, other than emotionally unavailable guys, like Mr. Rochester.
During the movie, Jane Eyre falls for Rochester, her boss. He plays around with her, flirts like crazy, and makes her think that he is going to propose to this snotty lady with a huge fortune. She becomes frustrated and confesses her affection for him and he proposes to her. It is truly romantic until she finds out at her wedding that he is already married to a madwoman. She leaves him in tears, restarts her life, and tries to forget about him. Later, she is proposed to by this other guy (the perfectly nice guy we all know we should like) and hears Rochester calling her name in the wind over the moor. She makes haste back to his estate, which has burned to the ground, and his eyesight has been lost in the process of unsuccessfully trying to save his wife. She goes back to him, and they live happily ever after.
What is it about me that is drawn to men with something dangerous about them? And why does my head know that I shouldn't choose them but my heart for some reason believes that things will turn out like a Charlotte Brontë novel. They and not going to suddenly up and confess that they have loved me all along. It simply doesn't happen. The reality is, I don't need drama to make a good romantic story. But somehow I must be conditioned to believe that I do. Too many 19th century novels, perhaps?
All the same, I crave romance. I need passion, a connection, a can't-live-without-each-other kind of love. Without it, dating is pointless. People always try to tell you that you can cultivate a love for someone to whom you are committed, which I feel is a total lie. Maybe the problem is that I am the emotionally unavailable one.
"Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper even than reality." -GK Chesterton
