No Happy Endings

I love happy endings. I love it when all the conflicts are resolved. Lately though, the idea of the morning after happily ever after has been haunting me.

I have seen so many relationships in my life. Some of them are easy, but most of them aren't. I have personally failed to create so many relationships that work and the idea of happily ever after doesn't seem to hold a lot of water with me.

Hollywood has so many ideas of how relationships are supposed to work. At the end of movies, there is the happily ever after. But that's the end. You never find out what happens after the wedding, after the vacation, after the life change. The credits roll and two people have a new and happy life together. There is nothing like that in real life.

There are always weddings, but there are also the mornings after. After the fairy tale part of every relationship there is every morning of the rest of your lives. There are the bills that have to be paid, the hard choices to make and all the little details of every day. There might be children screaming through the middle of the night, or the pain of realizing that there will never be biological children.

I suppose the idea I have the most trouble with is the idea of endings is that a relationship is not an ending. Relationships are the beginnings in our lives. They allow us to grow and develop in ways that we couldn't have without someone new in our lives. We get to begin again and make a new story with someone else. We may not be able to change what has happened to us in the past, but we always have the chance to start a new story.