Ben v. Noel? No Contest.
I love the present. There is such a thing called the interweb where I, for the price of two Starbucks lattes per month, can access Netflix's streaming movies and TV on my tiny laptop screen in the comfort of my own bed.
I have spent (wasted) the past two weeks and counting watch Felicity, the show from 1998 about a wide-eyed college student who moved to New York City to follow her crush. A dude she never said more than one sentence to in high school! Genius premise for a show, truly.
I never really watched the show when it aired so it's all new to me. New and old making me (slightly) nostalgic for my youth. Felicity started college in 1998 two years behind me. She was in the city and I was upstate, but our struggles were mostly the same.
Felicity watched movies on video tape, listened to mix tapes from boys, and saved her papers on a floppy disk. Boys called her on a phone with a cord. No one spoke of email, text messages, or carried a cell phone. Dating and relationships were not conducted that way.
We both had high hopes for what college and life after would bring.
If you have never seen the show - spoiler alert - it covers four years of a painful love triangle between Felicity, Ben, and Noel. Painful because it was obvious who she should choose. Noel was cute but whiny and over-analytical, while Ben was hot and mysterious, and when he smiled my heart broke for all women who have fallen for the Ben Covington's of the world. She chose Ben in the end.
However I'm still only in season 2 right now. In episode 2 Felicity and Ben tried to actually date but he freaked out (no, I'm not surprised either). She gave him the best break-up speech I wish I knew when my ex left me:
"You want something with me but you aren't strong enough to have it. And that makes you a coward."
My ex was a coward. Not because he wanted out of our relationship but because of the way he handled it (or didn't). Ben is only a sophomore in college so I forgave his cowardly-ness. My ex was 34.
I thought watching Felicity as a much older sort-of-adult person, I might have different feelings about the type of guys that Ben and Noel represent.
Noel is husband and father material. He's smart, driven and incredibly responsible. My 34 year old self should want Felicity to choose Noel.
But I don't. Ben had chemistry with Felicity that I can't put into words. The stupid kind of butterflies-in-your-stomach chemistry that I write about in almost every post. The chemistry that I look for on every date.
I've tried to date the Noels of the world because it seemed like the right thing to do. The sensible thing that a 34 year old woman should do. I'm done. I'm looking for the Ben Covingtons of the world, who learned about love and life in their 20s and are strong enough to be with me now.