Do you remember those Disney movies that you watched when you were a kid? Everyone always thinks of their youth as a simpler time when the future seemed full of end possibilities and promise - but in all fairness if you look at those movies, it’s a wonder the human race hasn’t become extinct! In every single one, in order to get their happily-ever-after, the female protagonist has to under go innumerable trials and tribulations just to get some.
Can you imagine if in real life you actually had to be kidnapped and held hostage in a tower and then be rescued under death-defying circumstances, usually with singing and small furry animals, every time you wanted to get your leg over??? We’d either all have joined convents or Ann Summers’ sex toys division would be more powerful then Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and both Clintons combined!
But the real jip with those movies is that once the rescuing is over, they ride off into the sunset, get married and everything seems really simple.
As you grow older, your sense of reality kicks in and you realise that there will not be dragons. But invariably you cling to the concept of happily ever after for an irrational amount of time - through break ups, cheatings, weird behaviour, stalkings, divorce - until you are finally forced to accept the incontrovertible evidence that life is giving you that there may as well have been dragons after all.
For example - I was discussing this last night over mistake wine with a friend. (Mistake wine is that last glass you have after you know you should have left ages ago - but it makes the night better!) She was telling me a story about when she broke up with her previous boyfriend. Now all break ups are a little bit sucky. The particulars of this one were...well, very sucky.
I’m not going into anymore details than that. But what she’s dealing with now is that her family still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that she is no longer with the previous boy and in fact now has a new one. Every time she goes home there are questions “How’s Previous-Boy doing?” “Why do we never see Previous-Boy anymore?” BECAUSE WE BROKE UP! She’s over it, he’s over it - the rest of her family on the other hand, are still flailing around in the denial stage of grieving - which is effort, for her.
Relationships are effort. Sex is hard work. I realise I’m not exactly tapping into uncharted territory here. This is not a new, groundbreaking idea. But - here’s my question:
Why is that when we watched those Disney movies in the halcyon days of our childhoods, we were able to realise that the dragons, witches, wizards and talking monkeys were made-up and yet completely unable to apply the same level of common-sense-thinking to the happily ever after part?
As was discussed previously - I’m new here. The idea is that as well as one weekly rant about whatever it is that’s got me hot under the collar (and in other places!), I’ll do a more project-based piece. In times to come there will be interviews, experiments, reviews etc.
But firstly, a social survey of sorts. Over the next few weeks I will be asking certain females close to me to tell me the first word that comes into their head when I say the word “sex” and then writing about it.