Love Lounge: Say Hello To the Cinderfella

At long last, I think I’ve finally found my male counterpart. And I’m not at all sure exactly how I feel about it.

Meet the Cinderfella. On the surface, he seems like the type of guy your mom always wanted you to marry — the complete opposite of the commitment-phobe, afraid-of-love types that plagued your past relationships. Basically, the Cinderfella is like a Disney prince in a sea of Mr. Bigs. He’s emotionally available, says ALL the right things and is more than ready to commit. He wants to DTR right now — that’s ‘define the relationship,’ for those not hip to the lingo. And he wants to DTR this very second. Because he just can’t wait. In the Cinderfella universe, even one minute is too long.

But as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In her essay for The Huffington Post, Michelle Martin describes the typical Cinderfella as…

“The middle-aged single man with an insatiable hunger for intense emotional and physical intimacy. Cinderfellas want passion! They want fireworks! They want to feel alive! They want to be rescued from their loneliness wastelands! And they want it all by the second or third date. Cinderfellas are too broken to maintain intimacy on a long-term basis, so they don’t make very good partners, at least not in their current emotionally needy state.”

And when you think about it, we don’t really need another Peter Pan or Don Draper. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that the idea of a Don Draper coming along and whisking you off your feet seems so appealing; it floods your mind with all sorts of romantic notions until you realize that maybe, just maybe, life isn’t really like that in reality. Whether we like it or not, the fantasy we’ve played a million times in our heads will almost always disappoint us when stacked up against the cold, hard light of day.

So maybe that’s why I’m a bit scared of one tiny revelation: This Cinderfella is kind of, sort of, a little, a bit, pretty much like me, except for the whole lacking-self-esteem-and-needing-to-fill-a-void thing because let’s be real, I’ve never been one to lack confidence in myself. I do, though, have a slight tendency to fall in love too quickly. OK, so some may say that I fall in love at warp speed. Even if the guy has no idea, I’m so willing to give my heart away at, well, the drop of a hat sometimes, and I sometimes wonder if that’s ever healthy. What do we do to ourselves when we’re so quick to emotionally give ourselves to another person?

Where do you go with that sort of revelation? Can you relate, friends? Is it wrong to fall so quickly and not want to look back? Is there a way we can stop ourselves from falling down that rabbit hole of love? How will we know when that guy on the horse is really just a prince in disguise? xoxo

[Photos via We Heart It]