Do you still believe in love?
SINGLES by Karenina Yaptinchay
Manila Standard, p. B24, 18 May 2000

To the delight of many single people I know, HBO Asia has brought back our favorite comedy series – Sex and the City. Last year, when my roommate and I found ourselves single again, we got hooked. Saturday night at home has become bearable. We consciously avoided late nights out only so we won’t have to miss it and its reruns. It became a ritual. We preferred watching it together so we can psychoanalyze our relationships in the context of what we are watching.

The comedy series, which I think is only on its second season, stars Sarah Jessica Parker as a 30-something single columnist who writes about sex and Manhattan.

It is not just about promiscuity and sex in New York City, which some claim to be the microcosm of the world. It is about single life in the city – how singles think, how they survive and how they win and lose some of their battles.

With the right dose of candid humor, Sex and the City focuses on relationships
between two people, usually between male and female, but occasionally between the same sex. Based on the book authored by New York Observer columnist Candace Bushnell, the HBO comedy series became an instant hit in the US. It may be too overbearing or too bold for the Philippine culture, since the series also contains stories on the sexual behavior of New Yorkers.

What is most interesting about the series is the discussions on how single women and men view relationships. While doing so, they cannot avoid the topic of "love" between a couple or better yet, the lack of it.

"If you believe in love, you’re setting yourself up to be disappointed. You can’t trust anyone. People are so corrupted these days," said Skipper Johnson, one of the characters in the HBO series. What a disillusioned individual, you would think. He probably just had too much to drink at Bowery Bar that night.

Maybe he hadn’t found the right one yet. But when you think again, ask yourself, when was the last time you heard a really good "non-movie" love story.

Being a romantic, I hate to admit that I found merit in Skipper’s statement, but he was right. When you are single and in your thirties, the world looks different, love takes on another meaning. It is different from how 18 to 20-year-olds think. It was simpler when you were younger, about ten times simpler.

In your younger years, love was easier to find. You can easily fall in love with someone who looked good in jeans or someone who drove a car. You can fall in love with someone who was nice to you in a party or someone who sat beside you in class or even someone who asked you for a date. Besides, because you were young, it was easier to fall out of love and get back on the saddle again. Everything was exploratory more than anything else.

When you get older, falling in love is harder. There are issues that emerge. For example, you can fall in love with someone who can accept your success (or non-success) and who can be very supportive. You can fall in love with someone who can tolerate your idiosyncrasies and love you for it. Of course, as you grow older, the choices are fewer.

I still believe in love but sometimes it gets to be so damned hard to keep on doing so. What you get while believing in and searching for love can be discouraging. Some of the single people I know find it hard to trust love again because of the pain and hurt from a previous relationship.

When you get older, "love" sometimes loses its novelty. No one can even define
it. Is love really losing its place in relationships nowadays? When I ask people why they are with their partners, I get "non-love" answers such as "because he takes care of me the way I want him to," "because he pays the bills," "because she got pregnant," or "because her family said I should marry her." And then we all wonder why more and more relationships don’t work. Duh?

Singles are in a battle, if not to find happiness in being single, to find someone
to share their lives with – someone to fall in love with.

As John Cage, a partner at Ally McBeal’s law firm, wisely said, "The world is no longer a romantic place. Some of its people still are, however, and there in lies a promise. Don’t let the world win."