whoopie school

Admittedly, I’m a little distracted this week. I’m fully swept up in the Obamania. For many of us, he’s the man of our dreams. He is the knight in shining armor come to save us from the past 8 years of the demise of the American Dream. He is The One, our savior, MLK’s dream personified.

Except he is not.

He is an intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, sexy man who is our best shot right now at making things in our country and our world better, which is no small thing. He bears the weight of our hopes and expectations. I just worry that they’ve grown and swelled far beyond the reality of what can be achieved, what one person can deliver. The changes we want to see in this country will take a great leader, but will also take the contribution of every citizen. Obama is no Prince Charming, and the country isn’t a damsel in distress; the longer we believe that we can passively be saved, the harder the heartbreak when the happily ever after doesn’t happen.

I think a parallel can be drawn to our romantic lives. We bring to relationships a set of expectations, often unrealistic, and don’t often understand the work that it takes from both partners to make it work.

As an illustration, let’s imagine that you’re a bright, optimistic, young woman full of dreams and promise when you meet a charming, powerful George W. Bush at a frat party.

You are taken by his swagger and fall for his boyish ways. You’d rather have a beer with him than with the pompous guys in your classes, so you start dating. As your relationship matures, you realize more and more that he is dumb and that his friends are liars and cheaters. He starts bar fights, wracks up debt on your credit cards, and embarrasses you in front of your friends.  When you raise valid relationship problems, he questions your loyalty instead of addressing the concerns. The more you try to fix things, the more indignant and egotistical he gets. Finally, after years of enduring his abuse and neglect, you decide you’re ready to leave, albeit battered, broken, and in far worse shape than you were in when you met him.

Just when you’ve lost all faith in men and relationships, you meet HIM. Obama.

You see him in a coffee shop buying a cup for the homeless guy freezing outside. He is poetic, sensitive, and, yet, has an intensity as he stares at his laptop. When you realize he’s looking at you, you feel sexy and powerful and terribly unworthy. You chat over a latte, and find that he’s attentive, humble, and smart as hell. Butterflies wreak havoc in your stomach as you agree to see him, again and again until the end of time, you say to yourself. You float out of the coffee shop and call all your girlfriends and tell them you’ve found The One. The One that you will make babies, build a home, grow a fortune, and live happily ever after with. Your whole fairytale fantasy suddenly seems possible with this man.

Except . . . it’s not.

After a few dates, you find that he’s still thoughtful, but sometimes distant and busy with work. He brings you soup when you are sick, but can’t make you well. When you complain that he doesn’t call enough, he points out that you never call him. Suddenly he no longer seems perfect, and you have work to do if you want to hang on to this relationship. All of his efforts are less than what you hoped for, and ultimately you are both let down that he can’t fulfill your every expectation. The relationship ends, and your hopes of ever finding love shattered with it.

Does that mean that he wasn’t the one for you? Nope. It just means he wasn’t The One, in the messianic, all-knowing, all-saving sort of way. It’s about having realistic expectations.

Bloggers have discussed ad nauseam the unsurprising study results that found that those who regularly watch romantic comedies were dissatisfied with their love lives. No shit. Romantic comedies, romance novels, and porn - all fairytales in their own right - create false expectations about what love and sex are all about, and what it takes to make it work. So when a perfectly suitable, real-life companion meets you, he or she falls short of those unrealistic expectations. Relationships are much harder than is ever portrayed in our love stories.

I hope we aren’t trying to write Obama: The Fairytale, and instead see this as a mature and viable opportunity to create a mutually beneficial relationship for the sake of making the country better for us. Let’s hope the gap between Obama the man and Obama the Superhero isn’t too vast, or we’ll all be undone by our own great expectations.