Desperation in Dystopia: Complaceny in Relationships

5/15/2006




Are we being blindsided because we want to be blind, or are we really being deceived? Why do we just hide our eyes when there’s something we don’t want to see? Are we really so complacent with only half the picture?

Times have obviously changed, and relationships have changed with them. No longer do women marry right out of high school or college. We wait now. We date many men. We watch shows like Sex and the City and read the infamous “chick lit” and revel in our singleness. Our expectations of relationships are much higher because we go through so damn many of them. If we added up all the men we’d dated, we get an unattainable vision of perfection. Subconsciously, we search for the guy that’s going to top that vision. We get so desperate that we block out what we don’t want to see. But our eyes are always forcefully opened when we least expect it.

We make him seem perfect by blocking him out. Ironic, isn’t it? At a time when we should be sharing ourselves, we’re putting a wall up for both of us. Whether he’s intentionally hiding something or not, we just don’t want to see it. We want to make the relationship as perfect as possible for as long as possible. In a society where we have to deal with so many problems up front, love is just one of those things we want to be without problems. And it is… until he reaches from behind you not to stroke your face, but instead to yank off the blindfold.

Suddenly, that “half of the picture” is a finished picture. And an ugly one at that. The original beauty has been marred by a few quick and careless strokes of a brush that’s too wide. We’re wondering if there’s a message on the back of the canvas, a la The Da Vinci Code, or if there’s still some little corner of the painting missing. We make every available excuse for him, when in reality he doesn’t deserve an excuse. We try so hard to believe nothing but the best of him, and this is what happens? But somehow, in all our idealism, a dystopia defeats our white blood cells.

It’s hard to open up in relationship after relationship. We learn from experience what things not to say, what pieces of our past to hide, what topics to talk about on the first date. It stops being real and it starts being manufactured. When we finally do open up, it’s almost too late. Sometimes it’s entirely too late, because there is an ultimate realization that the relationship has been between two people faking it. Not knowing everything quickly changes from self-preservation to deception. This is a fine line, and none of us walk it well.

Our dystopia, a result of our complacency with not knowing what we deserve to know, eventually dies off or becomes our life. We have cultured a strange breed of relationships in our petri dish of a heart. It’s up to us to vaccinate against our bacteria or to evolve to live with it.