Pattern Recognition

My first pop culture crush was Han Solo.

No, wait, actually, my first crush was a rat named Justin. But my first human crush was Han Solo. And I'm pretty sure Indiana Jones was second or third on the list.

So, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for me to blame George Lucas (and maybe Harrison Ford) for my long-term attraction to lovable rogues - the charming tough guys - "emotionally unavailable" I think the kids are calling it these days?

But, while Ingenue-loves-Rogue might work great in the movies, it's hardly ever a recipe for a happy ending in real life.

You can file that little bit of wisdom under "Stuff Zen Learned in College That was Not on the Approved Curriculum List", boys and girls. It's a big file.

Looking back, the self-perpetuating pattern seems painfully obvious. But, back then, I just wondered why every guy I dated turned out to be such a stunning jerk. Now, I see that I really just dated the same guy with different faces a half-dozen times:

- The Frat Boy: Who was killing time 'twixt break-ups with his high school girlfriend.
- The Soldier: Who should have been a sailor, based on his "girl in every port" habit.
- The Cowboy: Who just quit calling and coming around when the newness wore off.
- The Executive: Who forgot to mention his wife and kid back home.
- The Writer: Who wooed with great skill and enthusiasm, and lied the same way.

And then there were all the ones who oh-so-obviously only wanted to get into my pants.

Tinker, Tailor, Rich Man, Poor Man: Liars, cads, manipulators - all.

Is it any wonder that this is around the time I started to develop my "All men are pigs" theory?

Personally, it took hitting an emotional rock-bottom for me to finally recognize that the problem - the pattern - was mine. And so, in a strange way, I will always be grateful to the one who broke my heart the hardest and the last.

Still, it would be easy to blame him - to blame all of them. To label them Bad Guys and leave it at that. But I know, now, that they didn't do it by themselves. I mean, if you stick your hand in the hive, can you really get angry at the bee for stinging you?

Really, I did it to myself. Because, not only did I keep falling for the same "type" over and over ... I was falling for someone who was never real to begin with - an idea, a fantasy, a myth.
My college roommate - a Nice Guy of the highest order - always lamented that, despite what we claim, most women are attracted to the men who treat them like crap. And that Nice Guys just can't compete with that.

I countered his argument with the truism that (most) men want the woman they can't have - until they can have her. And maybe that's why our Prince Charmings so often turn into wolves.

See, Sir Nice Guy and my inner Ingenue had the same problem - but from opposite sides of the fantasy: I was in love with a charming rogue who would never commit to anything beyond "today" and so broke my heart over and over again. And he was in love with a woman who used him as the rebound guy in between her own Bad Boys.

We spent more than one night nursing a bottle of Jack Daniels at our kitchen table, debating the finer points of our theories on the theme of "Love Sucks".

We never did come up with any completely satisfactory answers.

But one thing we did decide in our brilliantly drunken and love-sick ramblings, was that pop culture has to shoulder at least part of the blame.

One night, we lounged on our living room floor (the kitchen chairs just seemed too dangerously high at that point) cursing all of the jerks who had ever broken our hearts, swearing we were "over" them, toasting to our wise epiphany, and damning-to-hell all of those chick-flicks and love songs and romance novels - and especially those insidious fairy tales - that set up such unrealistic expectations about love and sex and romance.

- Wuthering Heights? Drivel.
- Gatsby? A bloody fool.
- Bull Durham? An urban myth.
- Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty? Pfft. We don't need no stinking princes.
- Westley and Buttercup? True Love only happens in bedtime stories.
- Superman, Batman, Spider-Man: Type A, emotionally unavailable jerks.
- John Hughes: The devil.
- Jane Austen: A whore.
- Shakespeare: Her pimp.
- Even my beloved Han and Indy were thrown onto the raging bonfire of our anti-romanticism, along with James Bond and James T. Kirk : Cads and bounders, they were. Not worthy of the love of a good woman, thank-you-very-much.

As we tipsily pondered who we might be able to sue for our extreme emotional distress over these pop culture crimes against the heart, we made a vow: No more romantic fantasies for us, we declared, high on whiskey and our own worldly wisdom. We were done with it all. We would be all about the "anti-romance". And we would kick each other in the ass when we needed reminding of that.

Of course, after we sobered up, we both went right back to the jerks who had driven us to drink in the first place.

Sometimes, those epiphanies take a while to sink in, yeah?

The good news, though, is that this little tale does have a happy ending - two of them, actually.

A couple of years after finally hitting rock bottom in her last humiliating heartbreak over Mr. Emotionally Unavailable ... our Beloved Ingenue had healed up enough to take a risk on love again. And, more importantly, she had wised-up enough to pick a man - a real, red-blooded, imperfectly perfect man - who was worth the risk.

And Sir Nice Guy? Well, he took just a teensy bit longer to come to his senses. He actually married his rebounding princess. I know! Look, I desperately wanted to chuck a bottle of Jack Daniels at his head during the entire ceremony, okay? But this was a path he had to walk on his own. So, I just smiled through clenched teeth throughout the whole thing, hoping that I was wrong about her.

I wasn't.

Thankfully, he came to the same conclusion not long after and finally purged her from his life. Today, he's happily married to a smart, good-hearted woman and has two fabulous step-kids.

I'm quite proud of him - of both of us - for overcoming our pop-culture poisoning and finding happiness in our perfectly anti-romantic romances.

And, though he may never read this, I realize now that I owe him a big Thank You.

Not just for being a shoulder to cry on, and a pal to drown my sorrows with, and a big-brother figure to make me laugh or to offer to punch a jerk in the face ... but for being a constant example to me that there were, indeed, Very Nice Guys out there. And they were just looking for Nice Girls to love them, too.

Without that bit of light in the darkness, I might never have found my way out of the woods and into the arms of the Very Nice Guy who I married and still love madly to this day.

So, belated as it is: Thanks, J.

Love you, man. Cheers.