 MEN YOU MAY NEVER HAVE CONSIDERED (Part 5-Excerpt)
Barbara Lochner
Many years ago, Dr. Eric Berne said that lots of us are alone because we are waiting for the Prince with the Golden Apple. Mr. Right. The Perfect Man. This is so common a cause that songs have been written..."Someday he'll come along, the man I love...and he'll be big and strong, the man I love.." In the meantime, we wait and wait. But he never shows,
Then we begin to think that the secret of his arrival may somehow be connected to the waiting. If we have waited fourteen years, perhaps the secret number is fifteen. And when fifteen doesn't turn out, the number sixteen starts sounding fairly magical. And when, from time to time, a Prince with a McIntosh apple shows up, he's dismissed on the grounds that we have waited too many years to settle for anything less than the real thing. Rejecting McIntosh carriers takes on a certain amount of magic, too. It becomes an act of dedication to a cause that surely must be rewarded. If I am very good, we say, and if I wait long enough, and if I do not give in to these McIntosh people, then I will be rewarded with the true happiness that comes only from loving and being loved by the Prince with the Golden Apple.
...Let's be realistic. If you have a shred to logic, you must sometime accept what your experience has been teling you; there is no Prince with the Golden Apple, there is no Mr. Right, no Perfect Man. You made him up when you were too young to know better, and why should you pay for a mistake made by a kid? Consider this as well: On top of it all, you've been shopping for Mr. Perfect for you, Mr. Perfect for yur mother, Mr. Perfect for your father, Mr. Perfect for your best friend and (probably) Mr. Perfect for your worst enemy--just to put her in her place.
Men get caught up in this trap too. One perfectly nice and otherwise reasonable man I know is looking for a tall blonde Swedish type who is brilliant. independent, strikingly beautiful, successful, witty, warm, outgoing, sophisticated and athletic. Oh yes--she must also make him feel needed and take care of his home. This man has been looking fo such a woman for twenty years, and hasn't found her yet. In the meantime, he has turned forty-three and looks longingly at other people's children.
(next post-Married Men)
8:32:04 AM 
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