Feels like we start out, over Coke and other sweet pop believing in soul mates…The One. Course all the FM pop songs, happily ever after movie endings all help enforce that notion.

By university we’re crying in our beers because it didn’t work out. She’s The One that got away.

The reality of love doesn’t match up with the perception–thanks for nothing FM pop songs and so it’s hard to maintain hope. Cynicism is the obvious choice. So is settling. Which is so gross but it happens with an alarming frequency.

Eventually we become cryptic adults and over wine engage philosophy. We cloth cynicism with faux wisdom…experience and regret are used interchangeably. And now we often have no hope for ourselves or “our” love…it’s down To One, maybe 2 couples…we earnestly believe they can make it.

The rest of us are doomed. That couple is the asterisk, the fine print to our cynicism. That is…until One of em doesn’t make it. Kiss hope good-bye. (And for true…I must acknowledge how we define happy or success may not be the same as that couple that makes it…they’ll define it entirely different for them.)

I dunno…maybe this is all saccharine hallmark sentiment. Just saw Before Midnight earlier tonight.

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