Letters to Juliet

Em and I went to the movies yesterday.   One of those spontaneous mother/daughter moments.  She wanted to see Letters to Juliet and I, trying to live more on the edge (hey, it wasn't on my calendar), agreed to go. "Letters" is definitely in the running for the ultimate chick flick.  It stars Vanessa Redgrave in her search for a lost love.  Her lost love, as I saw in the credits was Franco Nero.  Whoa......wait a moment....wasn't he the Italian actor that played Lancelot opposite her Guinevere in Camelot back in 1969?  Didn't they have an affair back then?  Well, now that you mention it - they most certainly did and a son.  Life sort of got in the way and it turns out that they met again years later and actually married in 1996.  Letters to Juliet is very romantic, a search for true love and enough estrogen floating on the screen to curl the toes of any straight man (according to Em).  And according to Vanessa and Franco a telling of their own real love story.

I would like to believe in true love, but I want to believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus as well.  I'm just not convinced it isn't a myth or fantasy which is why we have movies about it.  But then I was married to a man who told me "The only reason to be with an older woman is they have a vagina, what men really want is a younger woman but they are too much trouble"  Being 50 at the time there was no way I could pretend I was a younger woman.  Hmmmmm.......I appeared to be married to man who considered me a vaginal convenience store.  Time to close up shop.

I can't help but notice that true love only happens in Italy or with Italian men, e.g. Letter to Juliet, Under a Tuscan Sun.  I may just have to pay Italy a visit, if nothing else the landscape is drop dead gorgeous and the food looks divine.

Spelunking the Past

I have had some time on my hands of late, and have been going through boxes from storage. I have always been a journal keeper. But I have also been a keeper of correspondence, which I sometimes think is the more interesting memory walk. Apparently, I also am a great keeper of copies of letters I have written to others. I ran across a letter I typed to a friend regarding the nature of marriage and relationships. I wrote it almost 20 years ago. I find what I wrote then to be just as true today in my opinion. It is too long to quote in it's entirety here so I will break it up over the next couple of days.



A letter to a friend:



...There are always three entities not two in a relationship, the man, the woman, AND the relationship (This letter was a response to a discussion of an article about heterosexual dating).



...Security, dependency, imagination, compassion and a commitment to not only each other but to the relationship. There are acts that might benefit the other but would be unhealthy for the long term survival of the relationship......



There must be an underlying sense of security that the other is there for you. An underlying TRUSTWORTHINESS. Lies and deceptions will destroy the base on which everything else depends. The partners need to KNOW they are secure in the love of the other and that they won't be betrayed. Each must hold the well being of the other and the relationship in the forefront of their actions and behaviors. Oh yes, there will be unintentional hurts and misunderstandings, but if the foundation of trust is there than the hurts will heal. It is when trust is eroded that the hurts stay open and raw.



Tomorrow - the value of dependency.