Jillian & Ed

Jillian, I love you. I do.

Whenever anyone begins with proclamations of love, they’re about to go somewhere ugly. And I am. I’m about to get ugly. But first, I’m going to be pretty: I love neurotic men. Love. I want to marry them and have their babies. Except, oddly enough, I married a man who’s not the slightest bit neurotic… and therein lies my lesson: sometimes what we think we want and what we actually want are different things.

The Ugly: Jillian, you are a horrendous judge of character. And maybe all of us are when we’re that invested, when we want something so much we can’t see anything that might be in the way of what we want. But I’m here to say, you’re in it too deep, and you need some perspective, some distance, and some blog. You need to sneak away from the flamenco lessons with Kipton and read a blog or two. Because really–and you’d know this if you’d read Straight Up And Dirty–the man needs to love the woman a little bit more than she loves him. It’s just the way it is. Period.

This goes for all of you. Anyone who’s with anyone where she might just find herself saying, "Maybe he’s just out of my league" needs to do some growing up. It’s like the Little Engine That Could. You can make it wherever you want, but you’re not getting there without local stops and painfully long delays if your attitude is can’t.

I liked Kipton, but now I don’t. Yes, I’m speaking about a man I’ve never met. I’m speaking about a nice guy. But there are nice guys all over the place. Let him go be nice someplace else. If the man isn’t willing to risk it all for you, he can’t be your all.

Yes, there’s something about being real. About being honest. Absolutely. But at the beginning you need someone who’s willing to play out a Percy Sledge song– a man who’s willing to sleep out in the rain if she says that’s the way it ought to be. Pick the safe bet. Pick the guy who makes it clear that you light up his world. Don’t pick the cynic. Don’t pick the realist. Don’t even pick the dreamer. Pick the guy who chooses you no matter what. Then… learn to love him back.

I didn’t pick the safe bet. Because I wouldn’t want to spend time with him on a deserted island, but that’s all you need… someone you can exist with. There might be fights, there might be ugly, but at the end of the day, there’s trust, there’s the deep knowing that he’ll always be there, adoring you first, knowing that you’ve got a partner through it all.

All that said, I like Ed.

Here’s the thing. If any of us were dating Ed, and he left, only to return later, with the, "I didn’t realize what I had until it was gone" excuse, would we fall for it? Hell to the es-yay! But is that the thing to do? Don’t so many of us sit around thinking, "I want a man who wants me when he has me, not one who has to lose me & miss me to realize he’s lost a good thing." We’re all kinda cheering for a situation we’d never want to trust if it happened in our own lives.

3 YEARS AGO: Grinch
4 YEARS AGO: Cookie Puss
5 YEARS AGO: Little Miss Independence