I’ve lived an interesting life. Most of it has been spent on this quest to find unconditional love with the man of my dreams. I think that living this way has probably made me a little cynical over the years because let’s face it: that’s a lot going on! And when you embark on such a grand quest, you do stupid shit like try to make the guy who told you straight up he doesn’t want marriage want to marry you. Or we accept a bull pen full of bull shit to try to make things work just to say that we found the one. In doing these things, we pass up quite a few people that are the “one right now” who could teach us things to prepare us for the true hardships of life, love, and marriage. Or, at the very least, fuck our brains out until we are ready to brave it.

I am trying very hard to hold on to that princess concept of riding out into the sunset with one’s knight in shining armor. There is a small part of myself that’s still innocent enough to believe that it happens to people that way- getting swept off one’s feet and living happily ever after. But then there’s that part of myself that has lived this life and knows that if they ever made a Cinderella sequel, they would have showed her cleaning his castle, ironing his clothes, cooking his meals, and raising his children. Meanwhile, the prince would have been at the bar with Eric, who was complaining about Ariel, both of them looking to get a little action in the back of the carriage before they were forced to go home to their gorgeous wives. But Disney can’t market that to children and adults go to movies to escape life, not think about it.

Does it truly exist, this concept of “happily ever after”? Can men be genuinely content with what they have and commit wholly to just that? There are the few that do it, I’m sure, but I only hear about it on television. Usually, stories I’ve heard have been about men that needed to go though all of the women they knew and a continent of ones they didn’t in order to be ready for the pressures of keeping it in their pants. I think men my age are still about halfway through that continent. Because of this, I’ve made certain concessions just to get by. You know, a little relinquishing of leash with some parameters. Again, though, here comes that DMX to remind us that if you love something, let it go. You have to let your “dog” roam and trust him to come back once he’s blown off his steam.

I’m still trying to decide who this concept works for. Do men actually return with those packs of cigarettes after banging their skanks? Are there genuinely women like Aaliyah that don’t stay up all night pacing the floors because they know their man will be home at some point? Do men truly want this? Do we, as women, get comfortable letting men do what they want? Or are we in the background lip syncing the lyrics to Kandi’s “Don’t Think I’m Not”?

Maybe we’ll never know the answers to all of these questions and we just have to let the cards fall how they may. But I know this, though: promising to come back in one piece is only good when it’s followed by a set deadline.