Once Upon a Time: The Fairy Tale Love Story Grows Up When We Do
A modern take on romance and relationships
A modern take on romance and relationships
Photo by Jared Subia on Unsplash
I won’t even lie: I love a good love story. Romcoms, Hallmark movies, and fairy tale love stories are definitely my jam. I was probably the only one who was surprised when I started writing romances.
But as much as I once loved the happily ever after trope, these days, I appreciate a nuanced, grown-up love story. I don’t care for damsels in distress and knights or princes who sweep in to save the day. I have zero interest in love stories that glamourize abuse or portray toxic relationships as romantic. I don’t care for codependent relationships either.
Our concept of relationships should mature as we do, and yet I still hear people talk about jealousy like it’s proof of love or characterize toxic can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you relationships as evidence of passion. On the flipside, there are those who think that maturity means sacrificing ourselves, settling for lackluster relationships, and generally accepting that we’ll never really have the love we want. Either end of the spectrum leaves me feeling perplexed. Are those the only choices?
We need a grown-up fairy tale — one that allows for strong, passionate love but doesn’t allow for bullshit.
How would I tell it? So glad you asked.
First, he doesn’t save her. Namely because the gender doesn’t matter here. Love is love. But the first step is this:
They save themselves.
A grownup love story doesn’t look like desperately looking for our other half to make us whole. It doesn’t look like waiting around for love before we can be happy and fulfilled. In our grownup fairy tale, we save ourselves. There’s no rescue, no waiting around for a white horse to arrive. We own our issues and work on them, and we learn how to be healthy alone. We even learn to — gasp! — enjoy our own company.
They choose each other.
In a grownup fairy tale, we choose each other. It’s not a matter of need. We don’t need this person to be healthy or happy or to feel good about ourselves. We want this person in our lives. We choose to share our lives with them. They are available, and we are, and we decide to explore a relationship with them.
But it doesn’t stop there. We keep choosing them, every day that we stay in the relationship. We practice gratitude and express it. We don’t go looking around for better options. When we choose each other, we define the relationship and the boundaries around it, and then we maintain them, keeping faith with the ones we chose.
They never abandon themselves.
In a mature, healthy love story, the passion can be strong without either person having to abandon themselves for the relationship. There’s balance. Each person gets to keep an individual identity — including time to themselves. Each person gets to keep their friends and interests — no one person having to give that up for the other. There may be compromise, but there is no sacrificing who we are for the sake of the relationship.
In a healthy relationship, there’s room enough for individual goals as well as relationship ones. Our person supports who we are and what we want for our lives, and we do the same. No one has to feel like they give everything up for the other; instead, it’s a mutually supportive relationship.
There’s room for growth.
Life changes us — or, at least, it should. We grow. We learn. We develop new interests. In a healthy relationship, we allow the relationship to grow and change as individuals do. We confront problems and address them. We recognize when problems are too big to be solved without outside help. We see each other through good days and bad days — and allow for the other person to make mistakes and have flaws.
We learn to give them the same grace we want for ourselves. We learn to communicate better, to build more intimacy, and to speak to each other always from a place of love and respect. And when we screw that up, there’s room to apologize and try again without keeping score.
The growth includes learning what healthy and unhealthy means for relationships. We understand that jealousy and possessiveness are toxic traits. We can identify emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. We unpack our own baggage and address it, and we hold the other person accountable for the way they treat us, too.
We don’t tolerate toxicity, and we value equality within the relationship. In a room-for-growth relationship, we also understand that we cannot independently save relationships. In the case where we grow and they don’t or won’t, we understand that we can’t stay.
There can be promises — but no guarantees.
This one is tough for many of us who still want to cling to a guaranteed Happily Ever After where once we decide it’s forever, it just is. But mature love isn’t a Happily Ever After tale. It’s understanding that even love and commitment aren’t guarantees of anything more than our intention to choose every day to keep loving each other.
We take the risk anyway — even knowing by this point that loving means the absolute certainty that, at some point, the other person will break our hearts — whether intentionally or unintentionally, in large or small ways. We accept that as a part of parenting, but we try to subtract it from our romantic relationships. Love means opening ourselves to hurt — but also opening ourselves to the full experiencing of loving and being loved in return.
There is no settling.
In healthy relationships, we don’t settle. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I never want to be a person someone settles for. I think we all deserve to be with someone who thinks we hung the moon. We deserve to be loved and appreciated for everything we are.
In a modern fairy tale, we don’t settle. We don’t accept passionless unions or relationships without understanding or intimacy. We accept that relationships require nurturing and attention. We learn how to care for the relationship as we would anything else we’re growing. We make time for each other, and we keep putting effort in no matter how long the relationship has sustained itself.
We understand that healthy relationships aren’t reached through longevity alone. We value quality over quantity, and while we hope to achieve both, we don’t give up the need for quality just to achieve an anniversary goal. If we don’t settle at the start, we shouldn’t settle in to taking each other for granted later either.
Outdated tropes should be left behind where they belong. Maybe they worked for us when we didn’t understand anything about life or love. Hopefully, we’ve learned a little along the way. If we have, we might find that our love stories have grown up, too.
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