I agree with what a lot of reviewers have said, but I also see this song as a protest or warning about the marriage fantasies girls are raised with. We are given these images that marriage is going to be a lifelong Harlequin Romance, fulfilling every need or wish we have. But girls who believe this will end up like the woman in the song, progressively more lonely and alienated from their mate and desperately sad at heart while their fantasy crumbles around them.
I really wish, though, that Paula Cole had done a bookend song that explores the opposite ending: what happens when people marry wisely and learn to take each other for who they are, love each other for who they are, treat each other well, and find that their "ordinary" lives can be very fulfilling indeed.
I agree with what a lot of reviewers have said, but I also see this song as a protest or warning about the marriage fantasies girls are raised with. We are given these images that marriage is going to be a lifelong Harlequin Romance, fulfilling every need or wish we have. But girls who believe this will end up like the woman in the song, progressively more lonely and alienated from their mate and desperately sad at heart while their fantasy crumbles around them.
I really wish, though, that Paula Cole had done a bookend song that explores the opposite ending: what happens when people marry wisely and learn to take each other for who they are, love each other for who they are, treat each other well, and find that their "ordinary" lives can be very fulfilling indeed.