When I was little, teeth were worth about 25 cents a piece -- of course now with inflation the average 4 year old incisor is worth a bit more. I remember once as a little girl, after having lost a tooth and forgetting to tell my parents I was devastated when in the morning I found my tooth as I had left it the night before, carefully wrapped in toilet paper, and under my pillow awaiting the arrival of the tooth fairy. In an effort to comfort me, my parents told me that a record number of children had lost teeth yesterday and the tooth fairy was swamped. They assured me that those who had to wait a second day would get 50 cents instead of the usual 25. That night, I dutifully placed my little toilet paper packaged tooth under my pillow and awoke horrified to find my father kneeling beside my bed with my tooth in his hand! How dare he steal my tooth! 50 cents was a lot of money but to steal from your own daughter?? My father was a thief, and the worst kind!
Days later, to reconcile our relationship my parents spilled the beans about the tooth fairy and as a result my short sighted little view of how the world worked was blown. Still, as a trade off, I could rest assured with the knowledge that my father thankfully wasn’t a thief after all.
Thinking about my tooth fairy experience makes me wonder why, as adults, we still hold so dearly to those unchallenged character myths that have been with us since forever. The cowboy that rides off into the sunset… has anybody checked in on him 3 days later? Out in the desert, alone, no food, no tent… Sure he’s got his horse but you can’t sleep on or eat your horse. Cinderella, who rides off with Prince Charming… 5 years later those glass slippers are a distant memory. The concept of Mr. or Ms. Right … the one person who not only has it all but will provide a loving, stable healthy relationship complete with the most amazing sex ever.
ATTENTION: SPOILER ALERT!!
Think about the best sex you’ve ever had… Think about the ingredients that create erotic, hot, passionate lusty sex. A cup of taboo, a dash of danger, a pinch of spontaneity, an ounce of the unexpected and tubs of brand new and exciting.
Think about the ingredients that go into creating that long lasting loving relationship… mounds of trust, oceans of stability and endless amounts of loyalty and predictability. I’m no math major but I can tell you that those two vastly different recipes can’t add up to the same person.
The truth is, that you never marry or maintain a healthy long term loving relationship with your best sex. That’s not to say you can’t have good sex – you just really really have to work at it. It’s true that if you really work at it you lose the spontaneity and the unexpected elements of hot, passionate and erotic sex, but I’d rather deal with that then the eventual realization that I’ve gotten myself into a relationship with a major personality disorder (insert image of Glenn Close and Michael Douglas from the movie “Fatal Attraction”!)
Sadly, just as we accepted that there is no Santa Clause and that the Marlboro Man wound up with lung cancer, accepting that Mr. or Ms. Right is not going to be able to deliver a perfect relationship complete with amazing sex does prepare us for the road ahead.
Equipped with this knowledge, we may not hang on to the guy who makes our head spin during sex but doesn’t call for a month and a half and we may just reconsider the woman who we are compatible with in every way but the sex isn’t number one on the top ten hit list of awesome sex.
