Dear Dude,

This question is more about satisfying curiosity than searching for advice. Do guys think about happily ever after? We all know that girls often think about love in terms of the fairy tale, Prince Charming, etc. How do guys think about love?

Sincerely,

Candidly Curious

Dear Candidly Curious,

Do guys think about love? Of course we do. What is a guy’s idea of love? Porno! JK. Mostly…we’re a visual minded gender…

There’s a different sort of guy for every scenario you could think of. There are some who want their lives to run like When Harry Met Sally… or even Knocked Up (in part because most guys hope they get to have pity sex with Katherine Heigl, her bitchy reputation aside).

Then you have the guy who wants his dick to be rarer than tritium. His idea of happily ever after is to sleep with more women than Walt Chamberlain and Picasso combined (we’re talking five figures there, allegedly). He’s Charming without much Princely to his persona.

You could maybe try to chart a guy’s definition of happily ever after according to what age bracket they check off on their OKCupid profile.

Every guy wants a fairytale ending. We’re just not all in the same fairy tale. To most guys in their early 20’s, forever isn’t something they think about. To guys in their 30’s, the long-term become more imperative and to guys in their 40’s, well, the long-term feels like it’s starting to pass them by. So what’s the most important aspect of creating our happily ever after? Location, location, location!

Or maybe just a confidence thing.

What makes you happy tends to change over time. To a lot of the sexually secure specimens, going off into the sunset with a gal by his side isn’t the main drive. To those who’ve learned to be lonely sitting at a café table by themselves is a miserable fate. We have the confident versus the codependent. Sounds good, right?

My idea of a happy ending is to be with someone. But I’ll be the first to admit that there are some guys who shouldn’t get married and have no interest in ever being tied down unless it’s for foreplay purposes. And you know what? Both ideas of a happy ending are valid.

No one need say there’s a right answer to “what’s your idea of happily ever after?” There’s only an answer that’s compatible with your idea. When a guy’s endgame is in common with yours, then you might just have found a fella to stick it out with.

The End,

The Dude

Lesson 21: Forget Happily Ever After

Disney princesses from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty, even Nala of The Lion King, have taught us from our childhood to look forward to some sort of “happily ever after.” Since our days of insisting on wearing our Disney princess Halloween costumes at completely inappropriate times (like your uncle’s wedding) we’ve desperately clung onto the notion that “happily ever after” would someday be all ours. As teenagers we claimed not to care about Prince Charming while we secretly screened each boyfriend, wondering if he was going to be the last man standing in our own charmed versions of a Disney romance. Now in college, we’re in the process of making our dreams come true and yet somehow Prince Charming keeps slipping through our fingers in a not-so-Disney fashion.

Believe me girl, I’ve been there.

Look, “happily ever after” is great and all, but how can you place so much happiness on something you haven’t even had yet? Every time you fuel the fire on achieving your own happy ending, you take away from the happiness you already have.

Unsure of what I mean? Let’s try relating this to something we can all understand – purses.  Imagine that ever since you were a little girl all you’ve wanted was a vintage black quilted, chain strap Chanel bag and you always promised yourself that someday you would get one. But until you’ve starved yourself enough to afford the Chanel bag, you’ve been using a worn-in buttery leather Coach purse. While you’re so fixated on that Chanel bag, you fail to realize just how great your trusty Coach bag is. Just like with a happy ending, if you put too much significance on an end that hasn’t even happened yet, how can you expect anything before the end to be meaningful too?

It’s time that single girls everywhere forget the “happily ever after” they’ve been trained to aim for and just enjoy the ride. The pain, the heartbreak, the awkward moments – it’s all just a part of the learning process. However, you shouldn’t be focusing on the dating learning process but instead on the process that allows you to learn about yourself, because once “happily ever after” rolls around, who knows what’ll happen? If it’s what I’ve been told, your happy ending is a time to know what you want, with little room left to figure things out.

Take advantage of the fact that this time before the “happily ever after” is your grace period. Make the mistakes you avoided and do it for the sake of knowing that it’s not the end of the world if things don’t work out. Believe in a happy ending for yourself, but don’t make your life all about achieving it. The more willing you are to enjoy the ride that is the dating world, the less you’re going to rely on the sturdy rock of a “happily ever after” and realize that you can have a “happily ever present.”

Look, I know how cheesy that sounds but when you really think about it, nobody really ever knows what happened to those Disney princesses after their happy endings. What if Cinderella got divorced when she realized she barely knew the prince? Or what if Sleeping Beauty’s Ambien high wore off and she realized she settled too quickly after her waking from her slumber? The time leading up to the happy ending always seems to be the real story worth telling, so forget “happily ever after” and just be happy where you are.

Got it? Now get the first 20 rules of the Single Girl Society right here.

It’s the subject of half the love songs out there: soul mates and the idea of a happily ever after that awaits those lucky enough to find the so-called Knight in Shining Armor.  Take Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” for example, the poster child for a happy ending:

And I said,
“Romeo save me – I’ve been feeling so alone.
I keep waiting for you but you never come.
Is this in my head? I don’t know what to think-”

He knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said,
“Marry me, Juliet – you’ll never have to be alone.
I love you and that’s all I really know.
I talked to your dad – go pick out a white dress;
It’s a love story – baby just say ‘Yes.’”

Beautiful, right?  Makes your eyes mist up a bit?  Of course it does, it’s the quintessential love story.  Girl meets guy.  There is drama. Guy leaves. Girl waits for guy.  Guy comes back.  Cue the happily ever after.  Except…wait a second.  He left her, right?  And she waited around for him without any indication he was coming back?  Um, we might need to reconsider this.

Let’s look at some more examples.  Movies like The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, When Harry Met Sally, hell, even He’s Just Not That Into You, and many more all have the same theme of love overcoming huge obstacles.  But are these movies ruining us?  Should we be waiting around for our soul mate to show up and magically make our life into some romantic movie?  Where is our happily ever after??

Well…it’s here right now, if you want it.

You can have your happy ending any time you want and then go out and have another one (and another one and so on).  “Happily ever after” doesn’t have to mean years of pining alone, waiting for your knight to have his adventures and come back for you.  Um, what about your adventures?

I’m not saying throw romance out the window, not even close.  However, romance isn’t only to be found patiently loving your prince from afar, Disney-style.  Sometimes your prince needs to be hunted down.  And guess what?  This sweet world of ours has a lot of princes.  I even met a prince last weekend at a club (he doesn’t speak English fluently, but that’s okay, I don’t discriminate among princes).  The world of our generation is even bigger than Cinderella’s – we have planes, trains, automobiles, and the internet.  Places like plentyoffish.com and nerve.com are pretty much smorgasbords for guys in hypothetical crowns.

Just be warned: in real life, princes are effed-up.  They come from highly selective and traditionally inbred families and are often brought up to develop narcissistic tendencies (um, yikes).  So prince is a relative term and often misunderstood.  Just saying, maybe you should be looking for a nice dude who you can have a good time with rather than some crazy-ass royal.

You have a choice, my friends.  You can sit at home and have your Disney romance (you better have TiVo because you’re gonna have a lot of down time) or you can go out and seize your love life by the balls (literally, if you like).  In my opinion, it’s about time to get a handful of genitalia.

Let’s get one thing straight; I am absolutely obsessed with Disney movies. But as much as I love watching them, the princesses walking around those movies always manage to make me feel terrible about my love life. They create unrealistic expectations about love and relationships all while maintaining a search for ‘happily ever after’.

So how does one attain this happily ever after? According to a Disney princess, by finding love! And how does one find love? With a song and dance, of course!

Gone are the days where meaningful conversation and actual chemistry are needed for a relationship, Disney princesses show that chiseled features and a great singing voice are all a girl really needs. Beauty and the Beast seems to be one exception as the Beast definitely ain’t no looker but Belle likes him anyway. The only downside to this love affair is that the Beast is holding Belle captive in order to make her fall in love with him so he can turn handsome again.

Ariel, in The Little Mermaid, has yet to speak to her man before claiming her love for him. She defies her father, runs away from home, and makes a deal with an evil sorceress to give up her voice, all in hopes of meeting this guy. But lo and behold, Ariel and the prince do meet and by the end of the movie they have fallen in love and are ready to live happily ever after. Maybe it was all the stimulating conversation the two had together that attracted him to her. Or the great pair of legs she traded her voice for.

Another idea that Disney princesses seem to instill upon us is that one day Prince Charming will just show up and make our lives better. But in the meantime we should probably be sitting around waiting for him. Look at Cinderella, for instance. Instead of telling her step-sisters to ‘f*ck off’ and then leaving the household to find a real job and house to support herself, she lets herself be treated like a slave to her step-mother’s whims. She is only let off the hook from this life when Prince Charming shows up and whisks her away to his castle. She doesn’t know him that well, but he has a ton of money and power, so I guess that equals out to a happily every after.

Instead of the cookie-cutter Disney Prince Charming, I’d rather go out and find a man with flaws. To me, that perfect Disney prince sounds boring. Every relationship needs a little disagreement and meaningful conversation, not just physical attraction. I think a relationship can have a happily ever after, but only if you’re realistic about it.

No guy is ever going to act perfect all the time like Prince Charming, nor are you always going to look flawless like Cinderella, but with the right amount of time and commitment, you two can make your own happily ever after. And If a guy still loves me even when I wake up looking like the Beast, that’s my idea of a Prince Charming.

What do you guys think? Do any of our relationships really turn into happily ever afters, or has the idea just effed us up when it comes to dating?

For the majority of us, love won’t be rosy and full of references to the likes of Cinderella and Snow White. Conversely, the composite mass of emotional mess we experience is exactly what makes love so addictive.

Alas, it is this aforementioned “composite mass of emotional mess” that I am beginning to tire of. The thought of emulating Sleeping Beauty and spending my days snoring loudly seems to be a very attractive prospect – especially to be rewarded with love’s true kiss (and more importantly, a good-looking man) for doing practically nothing.

Perhaps there is a lesson hidden in all those seemingly idealistic Walt Disney movies which dictates that in order to meet the perfect spouse, we must learn to lock ourselves up in castle towers, make carriages from pumpkins, or eat rotten apples.

Unfortunately I gave up on fairytales long ago. I gave up when I realised that there were more responses than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question, and more than two ways to do things. A relationship is not the simple one hour and twenty minute epic movie that fairytales make it out to be. If Belle had been offered the choice of a casual relationship then who is to say she would decline?

Not so long ago I decided – for these very reasons – to give up on love. The maybes, oohs and aahs, the unspoken words, the sporadic nature of humanity; it tires me. Which is quite a coincidence seeing as I quite fancy an undisturbed nap in a cold dark tower. I’ll get back to you when Prince Charming turns up…

Grown tired of society’s barrage of “romance”? Think fairytale endings really do happen? Let us know!