Disney: Successfully Distorting America's Ideals of What Romantic Love Should Be Since 1937

Ladies and gentlemen, love is a great big load of crap.
Or, rather, what everyone thinks love to be is a great big load of crap.
Hollywood does a great job of lying to us and screwing over America's dating and marriage scenes. Your one true love will have a perfectly sculpted body, an annual salary of about $30 million, and will be an absolute moron who makes you "feel right." Well, maybe not. Maybe some of those things will be different. But who cares? It's the feelings that matter, right?
No.
Newsflash: feelings fade. Love is not just feelings. It's a lifetime commitment to actions. Marriage is a promise, which no one seems to understand these days. Commitment doesn't mean you quit because you "don't feel like it" anymore. It doesn't mean "I've fallen out of love with you." It means, "I'm going to do what's in your best interest, whether I like you right now or not, because I promised I would." It means you work through the tough parts, instead of giving up in the middle of them. Those tough parts enrich the relationship. Those tough parts are what you look back on in forty years and hold each other that much closer because you came through it.
True love really does conquer all, but you have to work for it. I'm amazed at people my age and younger who are making that commitment already. I just pray that they're more mature than I am, more ready to settle. I'll be the first person to admit that marriage does not sound like my cup of tea. It sounds like a lot of work, followed by a lot of heartache, and the rewards it offers don't sound as good as the rewards I would get from a single life (e.g., freedom, the ability to be my own person, etc.). And I'm really shocked that people are ready to settle right out of college, during college, or even before college. But I can't expect everyone to mature at the same slow speed I do. I just hope they know what they're doing. However, the divorce rate in this country is definitely telling me otherwise. I have a theory on this. Part of the divorce rate is from lack of sexual abstinence. People just keep remembering that Someone Else who was "better." Sorry if that's graphic; I never promised to water things down. The other part, according to my theory, is that people don't understand love as they're signing up for it when they get married. They're driven by hormones, and they don't think through what they're doing at a wedding. It's crazy, now that parents are no longer arranging marriages, marriages are failing, because people don't apply logic to a situation. They don't assess every part of their potential spouse, as the parents do with a clear, unbiased mind. They go with what they feel, and when those feelings are over, they want to back out. Another newsflash: Marriage is NOT just a dating relationship; you can't just "break up" when you're "tired of it." In the words of my friend Phillipa Gordon, "You've tricked something out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like that. There, that's the first sensible things I've ever said in my life. I wonder how I managed it? (Anne of the Island--L.M. Montgomery)"
How to avoid the soon-to-be classic romantic blunder? Don't settle immediately. There's more to life than romance. Find out what it is before you sign your life away to that one special person, whom you better be sure is worth it in your mind and soul, as well as your heart. Just the one can steer you wrong. Prayer and logic are needed along with that "feeling". Don't be a statistic. Live first, and then take that life experience with you into marriage. Prince Charming doesn't exist. Nor does Cinderella. Don't look for that perfect person; God will put him or her into your life when you're ready. Focus on living, really living the abundant life Christ meant for us (John 10:10). Romance is not the greatest adventure life has to offer. God is. "That lovin' feelin'" will disappear. God won't, and a marriage centered on Him cannot fail, though it won't always be a bed of roses. Fairytales aren't real. "Happily ever after" is an overall assessment which means "And they were mostly happy in the knowledge that they could get through anything, because they had promised to love each other and serve their Lord, rather than marrying because they were 'in love'." Don't trick yourself into the belief that being single means you're not good enough. It just means you're not ready yet. And that's ok. Go enjoy your freedom while you can, and settle down when God says it's time.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go and enjoy my independence some more.