Below is from one episode of Ally McBeal, which I personally consider to be one of the saddest episodes in the series. This was Ally’s closing argument when they were defending a client who was charged of fraud by her husband because he discovered that by the time they got married his wife was not in love with him, instead she was in love with someone else. Someone who existed only in her mind, someone she just made up. And take note, she has been in love with this imaginary guy for eleven long years! Huh, talk about how great a person’s imagination is!
She’s being prosecuted for fraud because she married somebody who in truth wasn’t really the man of her dreams. Boy, won’t we have to begin building bigger prisons if we start arresting people for this one. Now, I suppose that the real fraud is this mindset that has been ingrained in us since childhood. That people get the person of their dreams. Most don’t. Does that mean she shouldn’t have gotten married? Does that mean she doesn’t have the right to commit herself to a man she nevertheless loves? And she was committed, she never left. She wasn’t unfaithful. Unless, you count those blasted dreams. And if you start criminalizing people for their fantasies, well, it’ll be like living in Alabama. Now I’ve spent my entire life doing what she’s done. Loving the one out there, somebody I’ve never met. I have a rough idea of what he looks like. I have a more specific take on what he thinks, what he feels. I have an almost exact sense of how he makes me feel. I’ve never met him. I may never meet him. I’ve actually been told that he’s not even out there. The men or women in our dreams live in our dreams. And in the real world, we should be allowed to settle for the one who comes close and that’s what she did. And that was the reasonable thing to do.
Then Ally’s team also presented one witness, Ms. Camero. She said that the reason why a lot of marriages end in divorce is because people enter into it using passion and love as the main reason. For her, marriage should be entered into for reasons of companionship, security, good parenting skills and not on something as foolhardy as passion and love.
It got me thinking. Is it really impossible to meet the man of your dreams? Is it really so bad to hold out for that someone who you’ve taken care of and loved almost all your life? Is it too much to ask for that you find someone who really has everything that you've hoped for? I’m confused. Really I am, that is why I am now contradicting myself. I once wrote that I know I won’t meet someone who has everything that I want in a guy, but isn’t that settling? In the first place, how would you define settling? Is it when you choose to love somebody who comes the closest to the person in your dreams? Or is it when you choose somebody who is just there even if you don’t love that person? Back to that Ally episode, the wife said that she does love the man that she married just not as much as the imaginary guy. She said that with the husband, she found companionship, they share common interests, and he’s a good man. But she also said that her wedding day was the saddest day of her life because she’s marrying a man who she doesn’t feel passion for and she doesn’t have anybody to tell it to that is why she’s so sad. So, what can you say about that?
Then there’s that thing about marriage. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it that love and passion are also main ingredients of a successful marriage? Isn’t those two one of the main reasons why you are marrying someone? Of course, companionship, security, and other practical reasons are also important, but isn’t it hard to spend the rest of your life with someone that you don’t love and who you married just because it’s practical? Isn’t that kind of marriage also headed towards divorce or annulment or a broken home? In that episode of Ally McBeal, when the verdict was announced and it was in favor of the wife, the husband asked Ally, “Am I crazy to believe that you should be in love to get married? Does that make me crazy?”. Well, does it?
Sometimes, I wonder if in reality love still exists. Sometimes it feels as if love now only happens in books, movies, or anything that is make believe. Has love really lost its real meaning? Has it become just a figment of one’s imagination? Has it become just an illusion? A part of me asks questions, has doubts; a part of me has become a cynic; but a bigger part of me still believes in love and continues to nurture that hope that has been planted in my heart when I was a kid. The hope that someday, I will find my prince charming, the man of my dreams, that someone who I will love and be with for the rest of my life.
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