By MAGGIE JANKULOSKA
Whether we like to admit it or not, at one point in our lives we have been bombarded with the notions of the intangible ‘happy ever after’, usually after a childhood spent watching and reading fairy-tales. You may long for a happy ever after as a lonely teenager watching rom-coms or as a hopeful bride, longing for the new transition as a princess wife.
Usually in the Disney realm, the princess is saved from an evil stepmother, a poison apple or a life under the sea, thanks to the kiss of their prince. Of course, once kissed, all trials and tribulations are soon forgotten and they ride into the sunset, with their life together assumed as bliss.
We never see Cinderella getting old, Snow White crippled by a mortgage, Ariel resenting her prince for making her sacrifice her mermaid life, Jasmine thinking of starting up her own business in this economy or Belle finding herself not attracted to her prince. Instead we imagine them as forever young and forever happy in their castles.
While I have been fortunate enough to have met the man I envisioned and so far we have spent five wonderful years together, does this mean we are in are in our happy ever after? We seldom fight, we support each other with our hopes and we have can even sense each other’s thoughts through our weird couples’ telepathy. Are we at that dubious ‘happy ever after’ stage, where we can drink tea on a porch and look into the sunset?
While we are and will be happy, our love story will not be a fairy tale and I am glad. We are both logical enough to know that after X amount of time together, a relationship does not become placed on the fairy-tale mantel.
After all, ‘happily ever after’ signifies stillness, a dead calm that you couldn’t possibly want in a relationship. A relationship is not about sailing on placid sea. Placid sailing usually signifies the end of a passionate relationship. Ironically, ‘happily ever after’ replaced ‘and they lived happily until they died’ in fairytales.