I once got into a heated argument in a restaurant in Elat, Israel on whether or not chick flicks were as damaging to relationships as porn. My position: yes! In fact, it is worse because chick flicks are more subtle...

Welcome to part 3 of my series on Marry Him! an article written by Lori Gottlieb in the magazine The Atlantic.

In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything.

What fascinates me is she uses the same person as my favorite writer Chuck Klosterman in Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs

If Cusack and I were competing for the same woman, I could easily accept losing. However, I don't really feel like John and I were "competing" for the girl I'm referring to, inasmuch as her relationship to Cusack was confined to watching him as a two-dimensional projection pretending to be characters who don't actually exist.
Page 2, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs

As a single, 20-something man who has a bit of an ego and no problem asking women out, I completely understand what he is saying. In the marketplace of "dating," I can't compete with Say Anything. I don't compare with Matthew McConaughey in How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. And if they were real people, really "competing" for the same woman, like Chuck, I wouldn't mind losing to them. But they aren't real! And you know full well the real John and Matt would make awful boyfriends and worse husbands.

And before you respond, "ohh I like those movies, but I don't expect that in real life," all I have to say is bull crap! Chuck is correct again when he writes:

[men and women] will both measure our relationship against the prospect of fake love...The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy.
Page 3-4, Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs

A couple of months ago or so I had a conversation at Starbucks with one of my "Stolen" girls. She is smart, funny, attractive, successful, ambitious; simply put: she is amazing. But she said something that floored me. She signed up for internet dating. What!? She even made the statement that, modesty aside, she thought her and [a couple of her friends] were real "catches" but they never get pursued. They don't get asked out.

And while, yes, I will beat up on men for becoming wusses (especially within the church), I have to say they have some justification in being wusses given that the perceived expectation is so high. Which brings me back to Gottlieb's comment on settling...

Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

I have to give her the point for today (if you are keeping track, settling is up on not-settling 2 to 1). I sometimes think I would be happier abandoning my expectations because I have come to realize these expectations are built on fictionist fantasies. It isn't that I don't want to find true love, it just seems that true love is fundamentally different than what we have seen. And just as I don't expect my wife to be Pamela Anderson, I shouldn't have to be John Cusack.