247. A Love Story In Three Acts

(based on a true story)

Act One

He graduates from high school and is full of bravado and naivete. He believes that he is God's gift to women and that he will have no trouble finding a girlfriend. He thinks his main problem will be finding someone mature enough for him because most of the women he sees seem superficial and materialistic.

He also suffers from a mistaken idealization of the female gender. Bombarded by critiques of male stereotypes on television and in movies, he somehow draws the conclusion that men are all pigs and women are all angels. He doesn't see himself as a pig which is why (as stated above) he thinks he will have no problem getting a girlfriend once he finds one he wants to date.

Act Two

He's halfway through college and is nursing both a broken heart and a shattered sense of self-worth. At some point, he found someone to date but quickly learned that women are just as screwed up and prone to bouts of selfish, pig-headed behavior as men are. He also learns that love is hard and that it is more akin to a winner-take-all competition (a game, if you will) than the flowery dance of courtship portrayed in Hollywood romantic comedies (many of which, despite being a man, he enjoys).

Having lost his earlier wide-eyed optimism, he turns jaded and cynical. But he still longs to be with someone because he remembers how great it felt before things went bad.

But time and time again, he tries to pursue relationships only to find them ending before they've even begun. This batters his already damaged self-esteem and he finds himself wondering if any woman would ever want to be with him.

Act Three (anticlimax)

In his thirties now, he has regained a healthy view of himself, but he's been apart from love for so long now that he's forgotten why it is that people pursue one another. He's forgotten how it feels (the rush and the wonder and the boundless joy) and so he can't remember why it is that anyone would want to go through all the messy trouble of trying to start a relationship in the first place, not to mention all the work it takes to make it last.

The idea of love seems like a fairy tale fantasy - a good story he once thought to be true but he now categorizes it as a thing that (to reverse the old adage) isn't true because it's too good to be.

Besides, he thinks, being single ain't all that bad.

The end.

(hopefully a sequel is in the works)