The Happily Ever After Standard - When Utopianism Knows No Bounds

Once Upon A Time - The Myth Of Happily Ever After

Promises stand by nature on a shaky foundation. We promise as a way of taking away (even if it is done in an illusionary way) the risk component that is an inherent part of every so called “promise”. In other words, we play the pretending game - we pretend that by promising to someone something, the risk of X, Y or Z variable getting in the way and putting at risk that very promise will magically disappear.

The very problem is that romanticism made us fall in love with magic and not with reality. Romantic relationships don’t fit the happily ever after ideal they “promised” us they would fit. Shouldn’t that be sufficient evidence that proves that promises will inevitably be broken at some point in time?

Happily ever after is a hoax for a myriad of reasons. The first one being that it is utopian at best to think that romantic relationships can bring us permanent happiness. By the same token, this implies that it is unrealistic to expect the person with whom we are in a romantic relationship with to make us permanently happy. No human could live up to that kind of impossible challenge.

“They lived happily ever after” - said no one ever (to the very exception of Disney movies). We never see in those movies the daily difficult/complex/boring/not aesthetically pleasing aspects of romantic relationships. The “not so pretty” and “difficult” sides of romantic relationships have been carefully airbrushed from those movies. It is no wonder we fell in love with a fairy tale that in no way matches the normal-not-always-exciting-mundane reality.

Building a vision of romantic relationships based on myths is already a very risky experiment as it is, adding our parents love model onto that can either go one of two ways - for better or for worse. In the absence of the modelling of a healthy romantic relationship between our parents, we face several potential dangers. We may unconsciously reproduce their dysfunction in our own romantic relationships. In contrast, we may “promise” to ourselves that we never want for ourselves what our parents had and therefore rely solely on the Happily ever after standard for our future romantic relationships.

In either case, we fail to take into account one of the most important ingredients in the playground of romantic love - that is our own contribution. If self awareness and introspection never make it to the party - we will spend our whole lives playing the hot potato blame game. The path of healing is our only hope at saving us from such a fate. It is about time we leave happily ever after to rest. That we break ties with such a myth. That we fall back in love with reality - till death do us part that is.