A Sucker For Romance?

I'm what they call a hopeless romantic.

Let's think about that term. Romantic is easy. I love love. I love romance. I love to be in love. I love romantic movies. Comedies. Dramas. Whatever. Does the couple end up together? Then I'm all for it. Same goes for books.

When I'm in love, I'm in love. I'm in it to win it as they say. I've really, truly been in love only a few times in my life. I've almost gotten married twice and I've gotten two official marriage proposals, neither of which was from one of the guys I almost married. So, technically that's four times I almost got married.

The first one probably doesn't count. Actually there's no probably about it. I was in high school, and my boyfriend at the time was drunk. We were at a high school dance. I had dragged him to the dance. I actually didn't realize that he was drunk at the time. I just thought he was being ridiculous. He didn't want to be at the dance. He didn't dance. I love to dance. So he sat in the bleachers. And I danced. When I joined him on the bleachers at one point, he asked me to marry him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't serious about it. Especially since he had told me before that while he wanted me and needed me, he didn't love me (it's from a Meatloaf song - look it up). So that's why I don't count that marriage proposal.

The second proposal was from a boyfriend when I was in grad school. He lived in Chicago. I lived in DC. We had started seeing each other the summer before his freshman year of college. After we graduated, we started seeing each other again when I was in graduate school. Over a winter break, while we were making out on the couch in his mother's house, he said something to the effect of "I think we should get married". It was a completely out of context, his proposal. We had barely started seeing each other again. Embarrassingly, I laughed at him. Turned out, he was serious. I did think about it for quite a while. In the end, I decided against marrying him for two reasons: 1) I thought he was too religious for me, and 2) I had been in love with someone else, but it was a hopeless cause and so I was entertaining other offers.

The third time I almost got married didn't include a marriage proposal. The guy I mentioned in the last paragraph - that I had "been in love with" for quite a while - was a guy I had been in love with for many years. It was an impossible love. The hopeless romantic in me probably loved that, but the practical side of me was heartbroken again and again. He and I got together and fell apart at least four or five times over about five years. Finally we had to make a decision. You see, he was/is Jewish. Seriously Jewish, not just Jewish on the High Holidays. So if we were going to be together forever, then I was going to have to become Jewish. Many aspects of being Jewish were appealing to me. But keeping kosher - never again eating pepperoni pizza or a bacon cheeseburger - would have been a challenge. The deal-breaker, though, was not being able to celebrate Christmas with my family. Christmas has been and is the only time of the year that my family consistent gets together. We are not particularly religious (which is why becoming Jewish would have been okay), but we enjoy the time together. To not be able to do that anymore was really not an option. So as much as I loved him and he loved me, in the end it wasn't to be.

The last time I almost got married was just before my 30th birthday. Well, I was on that path; turns out, he wasn't. We had dated in college. We had been dating again for about a year several years later. And just before my birthday, I made the fatal mistake of mentioning that I thought we were headed toward marriage. And he told me that he wanted to marry a woman who would read the Bible with him every day. Which was not me. And that was that. As it turned out, he became a minister (after getting a PhD in physics) and married a woman who wouldn't even go to his ordination (she was that non-religious). Irony.

Since then, I have not dated anyone seriously. I have dated but not for anything real length of time. Certainly not someone that I came close to marrying. Basically, I have concluded that I'm not good at being in a relationship. Maybe it's just a lack of experience. Other than those handful of serious relationships, I haven't had many men in my life. Serious or otherwise.

So maybe I'm not a hopeless romantic. Maybe I'm just hopeless.