Romance etc

As this is my first post, I should probably nod this blogging notion towards my old friend Leila, whom is jetting off to the land of Oz in a matter of days....lucky cow! We shall all miss her sunshine and smiles, and I'm sure that despite her prophetic dreams of elaborate australian deaths, that she will return to us unscathed from crocadiles and suchlike.
ANYWAYs more to the point, in an attempt to follow her blogging adventures, my hand has been forced by the ways of the blog, and unearthed a guilty secret of mine to outlet my random ponderings....so here we are....thus is the story of my blog...

As it is now February, and as Company brought to my attention this morning (while being extradited from my expert patient session on the grounds of ill thought-out attire), it is also the month of Love....and for many... the dredded Valentines day. I'm not going to blabber on about the assets/short-comings of Valentines day, as I have never celebrated it through choice...the thought brings me out in hives for so many reasons.

Nope, the topic (although somewhat relevant) is Romance...Yes I know, it's kinda boring and cliched with the whole february and valentines day thing, and frankly, attempting to be romantic is all a bit awkward and very difficult for me. Sex is the easy part, Romance is underrated.
But as I was sat feeling like a bit of an idiot and flicking through Company, I reached the article 'Is Romance Dead?'. Ok so a fairly standard discussion point, but Company have chosen the Skins cast to write their pieces on Romance. It just seems a bit odd to me that Company would chose 18 year olds to write their feature pieces on subjects such as this. Especially considering that the target age group for Company extends to much above their ages.
Whilst I have no doubt that they may have had their great loves and romances etc, and hell, I'm not even that much older than they are. It just seems to me that having a boyfriend and dating when you are in your teens is a far cry from that in your 20s (I would imagine, although I'm not all that far in).

When I was a teen, romances would have started with a drunken kiss/fumble followed by several other drunken nights, and eventually pizza, movies and more alcohol......romance amounted to cheesy text messages, drunken declarations of love, or good old public displays of affection....and maybe....if I was lucky, I might get met at the train station.
Point is, teen romance = sex and chilling.

Several Years down the line, as more professional relationships mount up and you find yourself with only the closest of friends; people have more money and a greater need to fill what spare time there is left with 'quality time', and things start to get a bit more romantic, flirting becomes an olympic sport, and dating (rather than loving-under-the-influence) is apparently more the done thing.
I first realised this change in dynamics when I turned 20... actually now that I think about it I was 19, when my then 25 year old man-friend first introduced me to the then foreign concept of romance, but it didn't fly with me too well as I was still clinging to the threads of my 'under-the-influence' ways...and as you would expect things did not last. But even standing looking through my wine-hazed-romance type world into his steriotypical romantic world of restaurants, culture, intellectual conversation, and longevity, 6 years away from my own, I could see our differences in the dating styles, and what to expect from then on.
In fact, my now fiance was my first (and hopefully only) experience of meeting, and falling in love with someone completely sober (which is a novel experience I highly recommend). It wasn't that long after the previous 'relationship' had ended that we met, but it just demonstrates the narrow gap in time and significant change in attitude.

Needless to say, having fallen in Love with the closest thing I could get to a neanderthal man (I mean this is the best of ways) I could find, I was completely blown away by his capacity for romance, with some of the most unrealistic gestures such as, moving to the otherside of the world to live with me, impromptu trips abroad, getting deported then hitch-hiking his way across his native Canada for Visas, then finally back to the UK...this whole process lasted about 6 months, and of course thousands of pounds and extensive upset.
If that wasn't enough, we may not celebrate many holidays or birthdays (yeah...I hate birthdays too), but I have a steady but unpredictable influx of gifts reeking of sentimentality and nostalgia....and occasionally things that are just plain pretty. He would never sink to flowers from the petrol station, although there was that one time when he drunkenly picked all the flowers from the garden down the road and flung them on me at 4am...the gesture was there somewhere. Unfortunately for Mr Yeti, I am highly unromantic especially for a woman, but for him...I try at least, although my attempts normally amount to steak and a case of beer...whatever keeps him happy...

So Is Romance Dead? Are men just too manly?....Nonsense. If Mr Yeti; a 6"6 hairy man covered in tattoos and piercings, heavy smoker, drinker, with an obsession for UFC and sex; can pull off being a romantic complete with feature length cheesy monologues....then I say there is hope for the world yet. I would also note that the majority of men develop this romantic style, or stage if you will, around age 23 (not based on scientific fact), or approxiamately 2 years after previous heart break. What is unclear, however, is if cheesy monologues apply to all nations of men or just north america. I would recommend that if this quality is what you desire in your romantic males, I would make my first stop in Canada.
On the other turn of the coin, maybe women need to step up a bit. This is the 21st century after-all, we've gotten so used to the concept of being romanced, that the thought of being the romantic ones frankly seems a bit absurd. Could I give Mr Yeti a cheesy monologue?....Hell No, I would sound like an idiot...or at least to the feminist inside me. But men have egos and flickering self-confidence issues that need grooming too, so why can't we at least humour them? I salute women that can embrace this, and retain their feminine dignity!