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JR. Forasteros - Sep 16, 2012
You Always Marry the Wrong Person
More From "After Happily Ever After"
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In 1987, Michael Jackson’s landmark album Bad became the first ever to have five singles reach #1 on the Billboard chards. For over 20 years, it was the only album to do so, until last year, when Katy Perry’s song “Last Friday Night” hit #1, tying her album Teenage Dream with Bad and causing quite an uproar in the music community.
Whatever you think of Katy Perry’s music, it’s fascinating that her songs have achieved such popularity. They’re an opportunity to put a finger on the pulse of our culture – the music that we’re connecting with (as evidenced by their #1 status – five of these songs have been the most popular in the country).
None of the songs so encapsulates the fairy-tale romance ideas we have about love, relationships and marriage as well as the title track (and #1 single) “Teenage Dream”. In the song, Perry raves about her lover, who is perfect for her in every way. Katy claims her long-time search for her one, true love has finally ended when she sings,
I finally found you, my missing puzzle piece!
That’s an idea that’s been a part of Western culture since Plato. He was the first to theorize that humans were essentially souls that had been split in half at birth, and that we spend the rest of our lives looking for our other half. They are literally our soul-mates. Is there a more romantic notion than the idea that we all have this hole inside us, this gap in our persons and that somewhere out there is a person perfectly designed for us? That person who fits just right, who “gets us”?
We love the idea of soulmates – it’s the foundation of the Romantic, fairy tale script. It’s as old as Plato and as fresh as romantic comedies. Like Jerry McGuire, we just want to find that person who complete us. Our missing puzzle piece.
It’s ironic that a synonym for Katy’s song is “Adolescent Fantasy” because though we don’t acknowledge it, that’s exactly what the idea of a perfect soul-mate is. It’s a delusion that can poison the real relationships we have, and it’s a fantasy that puts dangerous, unfair pressure on love and marriage. We have this sense that we’re broken, that we’re incomplete. And that is true – as individual people, we’re not complete. As humans, we’re sinful, fallen and in need of redemption. We have an innate sense of this, so we seek out wholeness, completeness. Our problem is that we imagine ourselves to be half-souls. That we need a romantic Other to be complete. We draw our pictures of personhood from fairy tales like Jerry McGuire or Teenage Dream (and I don’t mean to pick on those two… I dare you to find a romantic comedy or love song that doesn’t embody this idea). We believe that a romantic relationship is what we’re missing. That a love or marriage relationship will make us whole.
We talk about people who are single as if they’re broken. Often in our culture, to be single is to be alone and if you’re alone, then you must be by definition incomplete.
You’d think that in the Church we’d be better than that, but we’re not. Despite the fact that Plato didn’t contribute anything to the Bible, this theology has entwined itself into the Church. We love to talk about finding “The One” – that person that God hand-crafted just for us. Whether you’ve never married or you’re divorced or widowed, you’ve been told, probably both explicitly and implicitly that there’s something wrong with you and you need someone in your life to fix you. That you’re broken and you need someone to make you whole.
