True love is easy

I arrived home today after spending two days snowed in with Chris, and remembered that although my Harper's Bazaar had arrived a week or two ago, I hadn't found time to read it. Sitting down to catch up on "Cougar Town" and "Castle," I flipped through the national glossy magazine, which in the recent past has seemingly only published articles about topics other than fashion if they're book excerpts.

In the February 2011 issue of HB, there is a one-page article by Alex Kuczynkski, who normally covers beauty topics and wrote a book called Beauty Junkies, about the secret to a happy marriage. That secret? Ease.

She argues that one should not have to "work" at marriage; that the love should be easy and continue to grow, not diminish. "But the notion that we ought to choose to remain in love doesn't wash with me anymore," Kuczynkski writes. "Love is a commitment, but the idea of choosing to work at your marriage sounds like a drag."

I may not be married, but I definitely agree. Love should not be hard. And drama does not a happier or more meaningful coupling make.

On mating and our expectations of the opposite sex

After I met my (new) Prince Charming on OKCupid.com, my father, who has been single since he and my mother separated, decided to create an OKC profile. Since the time he signed up, he's logged many an hour winking at attractive women within an appropriate age range, and many of these leads have led to nothing.

Maybe a week ago, Dad winked at a woman and complimented her full, wavy hair. She responded and said she thought they weren't compatible physically, which she amended by saying they were interested in different body types, and then said that my father's plans for the future didn't match hers.

Similar communiques from other women have had Dad asking me why women are responding in this way to him. I've shared with him my theory, and I think I'm truly on to something. My theory is that a good portion of middle-aged women don't take online dating, and perhaps even dating in general, seriously. By middle age, it's possible that these women have built lives that make them happy and they've only got room for a man if he's "perfect."

I wrote "On women, superficiality and the new Prince Charming," on December 17th after reading a conversation on Facebook between two guys about how superficial women are. My original thesis was that women aren't too superficial and that even if we are, it's not necessarily the fault of women that we have unrealistic expectations.