Musings of an imperfect and idealistic nature

I was driving home with Mom from the mall when she just comes out with "I love your dad." We were listening to something vaguely mushy, "Anna Begins" by the Counting Crows, I think, and she just said it, and I was listening to the lyrics, and thinking about my mom and dad, and I realized something. I'm really really grateful to my parents for giving me a realistic example of love--romantic love, I mean, and how it works in a marriage. Because they fight like tigers, and there is a lot of shrieking and yelling and angry words in this house, but they know, because they've spoken to me, that most of the time it's venting about stuff at work or in life that they can't deal with another way. And I see the fighting, and the give-and-take, and the occasional sappy moment, and the day to day grittiness of it, and the grit it requires, and truthfully I feel a little bit of pity for all those people who say, proudly, "my boyfriend and I have never had a fight." Because those people are eventually going to have words, and they're probably going to break up, because they don't know how to deal with it (ex-roommates who know who you are, I'm talking to you!), or they're blindsided by it, or something.

I want that for myself, I think, which may explain why I haven't begun dating yet. Getting through the introduction, to the first dates, to the awkward conversations and the trying to find common ground, and the grand romantic gestures that will probably happen at least once, to get to the part where there's comfort, and cuddling, and just being there for each other without needing to be completely absorbed in each other at every moment, is something that I don't feel prepared for. Which is conceivably the lamest reason not to date ever, but I'm young and I'm destined to be this stupid for at least five more years. Probably longer (read forever here) given what I've seen of most of the thirty and over crowd that I know. Stupidity and self-inflicted blindness are hallmarks of the human race, and I don't anticipate moving beyond that in this lifetime *grin*.