perfect marriage

There are lots of sex blogs out there that are tacky and absolutely appalling. They talk about mindless humping, one night stands, prostitutes, stealing of panties, zao-geng (trying to see someone's underwear) etc. For example : http://www.dickchan.blogspot.com. I have very little respect for this guy and the way he treats women like sex objects. But then again, he doesn't deserve all my critisism because there are tons of guys out there just like him.

On the other hand, there are some "sex blogs" out there that don't cheapen sex, love or marriage. I recently read a blog set up by a guy to talk about his marriage. It is one of the most unbelievable blogs i've ever read! It is amazing how loving he is towards his wife and how much he admires her. Even after 28 years of marriage, he absolutely worships her. She may not have the perfect body or demeanor but he thinks the world of her. He does talk about the sex between them but it in no way demeans his wife, or the sex they have.

This is an entry I've taken from his blog:

In the past it was always a universal truth that the girl in school that all the boys would lust after would have a not-so-popular friend.

Phillip Larkin described it like this:

Wild Oats

About twenty years ago
Two girls came in where I worked -
A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs I could talk to.
Faces in those days sparked
The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt
If ever one had like hers:
But it was the friend I took out.

And in seven years after that
Wrote over four hundred letters,
Gave a ten-guinea ring
I got back in the end, and met
At numerous cathedral cities
Unknown to the clergy. I believe
I met beautiful twice. She was trying
Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

Parting, after about five
Rehearsals, was an agreement
That I was too selfish, withdrawn,
And easily bored to love.
Well, useful to get that learnt.
In my wallet are still two snaps
Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.
Unlucky charms, perhaps.

But beauty is a lot more complicated than ‘bosomy rose’ versus the ‘friend in specs’. Very often true beauty is to be found in the friend, rather than the rose.

Perhaps if Larkin had recognised this and not continued to lust after bosomy rose he would have been more happy in his relationship. It’s just as well for us that he didn’t, of course, otherwise we would have been denied his wonderful poems.

For me, that was the key point of the film American Beauty. True beauty is often to be found in the most unexpected places. Like the image of the paper bag floating on the wind.

Thora Birch plays the not-so-popular friend to the supposedly beautiful Mena Suvari, who is the epitome of what many men would regard as ‘hot’.

But when the camera cuts to the view of Thora Birch topless in the window my thought at that point was, “Wow, she is gorgeous“. For me it was Thora Birch that was the real American Beauty, not Mena Suvari.

Indeed, Thora Birch seems to have made a career out of playing the not-so-popular friend. And that’s why she is one of my heroines.

In The Hole she was the not-so-popular friend of Keira Knightley. I kept wanting to shout at the males in the film, dammit, can’t you see that Thora is much more beautiful than Kiera!

An in Ghost World she played the not-so-popular friend to Scarlett Johansson, but again, in my view, is much the more beautiful of the two.

Sue also found herself in school befriending an attractive girl that many boys lusted after. She had her admirers too, of course, but for a while lived in the shadow of her popular friend. And I suppose I too lusted after popular friend for a while, until I realised where the true beauty lay.

I could have made the same mistake that Larkin had made, in not appreciating who was really the most beautiful, but thankfully I didn’t.

I had my wild oats period in my first year of college; Sue and I had agreed to be ‘just friends’, although unbelievably this was the period when we had our ‘First Night‘ encounter. Looking back on that how could we have carried on just being friends? What was going through my mind at that point? I don’t know. I guess I was still searching for the perfect woman, until I came to my senses and realised that I had found her already.

As American Beauty shows us, true beauty is often there right in front of us; we just need to open our eyes to see it.

yup. I actually take advice from his blog on how relationships/marriages should be.