Bad Romance

My name is Becky and I'm a Romantic.

I cried during the scene in Love Story (pictured, top) when Ali MacGraw's Jenny brings a jar of peanut butter and sliced bread for lunch with Ryan O'Neal's Oliver because they're newlyweds on a budget. I buy $0.99 writing notebooks covered in hearts.

But I also reject fantasy, end relationships when they're toxic, and don't believe there's such a thing as happily ever after. So, no 12-steps here.

Over the years, men I loved--and sometimes men I barely knew--tagged me like blog posts with easy labels: You're a romantic, you're on some poetry sh**, you think too much, you ask a lot of questions ...

Never meant to be complimentary, the words were tossed at me like hand grenades. But once you begin to truly settle into your skin, become your own fan, so to speak, the intended limitations of those labels just ring false. You're defining yourself.

Recently, I read a feature about Ali MacGraw in Vanity Fair, in which she detailed how she abandoned her scorching Hollywood career just as it was taking off, because her on- and offscreen love, the volatile leading man Steve McQueen, insisted.

McQueen was a serial cheat, abusive, and controlling. Yet, still, MacGraw said she struggled with feeling like she was good enough for someone as iconic as McQueen. Hollywood deals in well-crafted fiction.

Real love is about integrity and connection (and, yes, a dollop of romance).