Last night was the debut of my radio show Love Lessons.  I’m Renee Mazer and I’ve been doing radio for a while. My co-hosts are animal fanatics and our past shows focused on topics like passing laws to give pigs more room to turn around in their cages.  Great cause and I’m all for happy pigs, but I don’t think we were becoming household names.  Besides…sex sells, I write sex comedy and I have a career to launch.

Since it was our first “Love” show I thought we should start at the beginning. Specifically, how Grimm fairy tales and other seemingly innocuous bedtime stories set us up for a lifetime of messed up relationships.

I started the show by reciting a poem I wrote for Not Too Scary Vocabulary, an SAT vocab program I created.  This poem teaches the word deleterious (harmful) and goes like this:

Fairy Tales are deleterious.  Don’t laugh, I’m being serious.  A handsome prince always rescues a damsel from strife.  Little girls everywhere say,”Some day that will be my life.”  Then reality hits and they realize that the men they are dating are just regular guys.  They’re not dashing.  They have acne.  There’s not a castle to be seen.  A woman’s chances are nil of ever being queen.  So to all girls I say, put away your fairy tales at night.  Don’t get your hopes up because reality bites.

I want to be rescued!  I want a white knight to ride up on a horse and pay my mortgage or at least my Verizon bill.

I should know better.  My marriage was more like Like Little Red Riding Hood (Wolf in sheep’s clothing destroys naive girl) than Cinderella and being eaten would have probably been more fun than my divorce.  I have dated so much I can honestly declare myself a dating expert.  But with all the dating, there is still no one I want to bang who wants to pay my mortgage.

Those childhood fairy tale beliefs die-hard.  Last night I began polling friends and discovered they all believe they will fall in love one day and live happily ever after. Even the guys.  Even the ones who swear they will never get married because every one of their friends has had a marriage implode.  That includes the guy I’m currently dating.   Not sure if I should be insulted by the fact that when we were having this discussion in a romantic situation, he seemed to be referring to “some day” finding this true love.  I was like, “I’m right here you schmuck!”  But I digress.

This whole topic started bumming me out as it reminded me that I’ve yet to meet my prince charming, thinking he is going to show up is delusional and REALITY BITES.

Then I had an epiphany.  My favorite childhood bedtime story was not Sleeping Beauty.  It was Sweet, Savage Love, by Rosemary Rogers.  I don’t remember the details, but it was one of those books with guys that look like Fabio (long hair, bulging muscles) on the cover ravaging some woman and included lots and lots of steamy sex scenes.  I was quite precocious as a kid.

Once I put it all in perspective, I felt much better.  I get plenty of passion with long-haired, muscular guys.  I date heavy metal rockers.  I have fulfilled my childhood fantasies, over and over again.

Do you still fantasize about true love, white picket fences, and 2.5 kids?  Please write and let me know.  I’m fascinated by this topic and how childhood beliefs stick with us.

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