When I was twenty-nine I met a man, a wonderfully handsome man whom I believed might be “the” one, “the” Prince Charming. I fell in love for the first time as an adult (or for the first time period I should say) and all I wanted to do was be with this man I loved so very much. Oh, yeah did I mention he was married (he still is, so he didn’t turn out to be Charming either) and please save your judgmental distain for someone else. No one will ever know what I’ve been through until they’ve walked forty-five miles in my stilettoes hauling a very precocious five year old and two pre-teen boys who are tugging and pulling you in every direction but the one you want to go in. It didn’t start out that way, when I met him he had filed for legal separation from his wife. And because I’m the person I am, I went online to make sure he wasn’t lying to me, and made my way through the online county database for El Paso and I found it. Hey, I had to make sure, but did it help? Nope.
Falling in love and dating a married man is not something that any woman sets out to do. I mean it’s not one of our life goals or on our bucket list next to graduating college, going on a cruise or buying those blue satin Manolo Blahnik shoes from the Sex and the City movie. It’s just not something one thinks about when you’re going through it. When you find yourself in a situation like mine, trying to find the moral compass that you know you should follow but is just as elusive as that fucking Charming guy with his mythical white horse everyone says he rides in on. And where does he actually ride in on from? Like does a magic cloud appear at the very moment he decides to “ride” into your life? Or does he actually ride miles and miles from somewhere? But where?! I want to fucking know?! Is there a portal or wormhole that he just rides through and *poof* he’s amazingly at your front door, with his white steed huffing and puffing almost as if to say “Dude next time warn me we’re going to go through that fucking thing and I won’t be caught off guard, okay?”
In any case, the fact that girls grow up to believe that Prince Charming is out there somewhere is a farce, and in a way I’m so glad that I didn’t have daughters because I think I would have been very straight forward had I had a daughter. I would have said to her something like this “So, you know that grandma told you about Prince Charming, but don’t believe her because grandma is bat shit crazy and that Charming dude doesn’t really exist”. But even though I had boys, I have also made sure that they knew that girls/women might hold them up to this false image of what men should be like.
Women who believe this myth expect to be rescued by men whom they’ve been tricked into believing they are their very own version of Prince Charming. And that those expectations may go awry in catastrophic ways. So I’ve said to them when they meet their potential life partner that they tell her “I am not in any way, shape or form a Prince Charming or any sort of likeness thereof. So the sooner you accept that we can move on, by the way my mom told me to tell you that”.
I’m just making sure that my boys cover their asses when it comes to being pigeon holed into this Charming dudes image. I mean I’m not saying that they’re not charming in their own way, of course they are they’re MY boys after all, they’re oozing charm out of every pore because of MY genetic makeup (your welcome boys). But they are not “the” Prince Charming that every woman thinks is out there and I don’t ever want them to feel the pressure that some women may put on them to be that Charming dude, EVER.
So back to my relationship with my married boyfriend, the thing is when I met him he was in the process of getting a divorce. I met him where I use to work in at a supply house for electrical, mechanical and general contractors. I first saw him through the security monitor, and I fell in love instantly. Tall, dark, handsome and his cologne lingered throughout the sales counter into my office, it was Halston Z-14. It’s funny the things one remembers about certain moments in their lives. How was I to know that twenty years later I’d find myself waking up from that Sleeping Beauty phase and realize he was more like the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood than Prince Charming? By the way I just want to mention that I LOVE Alan Rickman in that movie, it was his character that I’m comparing my married boyfriend to. In any case, back to why I spent twenty years of my life waiting for this indecisive, passive-aggressive, obsessive-compulsive emotional vampire.
Yes that is a long description but it’s better than calling him an emotional sucking self-centered asshole who only thought of himself, right? Again getting involved with a married man wasn’t something I wanted nor liked about myself during this period of my life. I was convinced wholeheartedly that I loved him and that I would wait forever for him. Stay tuned for part three……..
The Huntress 915 