Happily Ever After
I have to gloat, I have to dance, for hope has been restored within me. Today I found out that one of my very good friends got engaged over the weekend. What has given me hope is that this kind of thing is still possible, because I was beginning to really believe that successful and committed relationships have gone the way of the dodo bird. This friend of mine went out with her now ex-boyfriend for 5 fucking years, and in that entire time, he did not propose. By the time their relationship ended, he was a 30 year old man who had JUST moved out of his parents' house, and it wasn't that he didn't have the means, in fact he had a very steady and good paying job that would have enabled him to move out long before, he just didn't want to leave the comforts of "home". I am finding that nowadays this is an all too common problem amongst guys, especially in this city. Guys try to milk the whole "my mom does my laundry while I go to work and make $40 an hour and come home to my XBox and my weed and occasionally text message my chick" for as long as they can, and it is this mentality that recently cemented the notion that a girl like me is doomed to spend the rest of her life alone with the occasional failed relationship here and there, as has been the case thus far. My friend's relationship with this dude ended because he was feeling pressured to make a committment, he - a 30 year old man with a steady job and a beautiful girlfriend (she is gorgeous!) - felt pressured to grow the fuck up already and quit stringing her along. So he broke up with her, instantly regretted it and then proceeded to try to get back into her life for the better part of a year until she broke the news to him that she met somebody else. This guy, who she has been seeing for not terribly long and seems like an extremely nice guy and an all around winner who has his shit together, propsed to her. It is the best news I have heard in a long time, after seeing so many broken relationships amongst my friends simply because the loser guys they were dating wouldn't grow the fuck up and take the relationship seriously. It gives me hope. It isn't as though settling down and getting married is a huge priority for me at this point in my life, being only 23 and having a job that is more demanding than a two year old taking a temper tantrum in a toy store because they aren't getting that new Barbie doll, but I have been put through the ringer more times than I care to count and that alone has soured me on the concept of love and being able to be happy with somebody. Perhaps there is a light at the end of this tunnel.