Mr. Darcy: Fact.

“Conflict in close relationships is not only inevitable, it’s essential. Intimacy connects people who are inevitably different - as the saying goes, if two people agree about everything, one of them is superfluous. Conflict is the mechanism by which we set boundaries around these differences, so that each party feels safe with the other.” - Martha Beck

As a whole-hearted Pride and Prejudice devotee (some may say fanatic), I must defend Darcy and Elizabeth. I contend that a relationship story such as theirs is entirely realistic and could happen to any one of us Single Ladies today.

Here’s the absolute crux: they don’t argue and dislike each other based on a solid disagreement or personality conflict; they verbally spar because they misunderstand each other from the very beginning (through their own faults - the pride and the prejudice are here) - and they GROW from realizing their errors (“Till this moment, I never knew myself.” p.202).

Without Lizzy, Darcy would have remained stodgy and insular, as the man himself says: “...[selfish and overbearing] I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” (p.349) Hmm...I like that part about being worthy of being pleased. And Elizabeth, for her part, would have continued to believe her first impressions of him and dismissed him as a prat (“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” p.21). They become better people because they mess up with each other first.

Now, back to modernity here, you can (and I’d argue, only really truly) find someone intriguing and dynamic once you’ve discovered something entirely different from yourself. Don’t you want something to talk about? Something to learn? I think Lizzy and Darcy fit like puzzle pieces - their experience and personalities complement, not copy, each other, so the sum is greater than the two separate parts! Synergy, my friends.

And here’s my favorite part: Darcy loves her strictly against his own wishes in the beginning. And our dear Lizzy gets a big slice of humble pie when she understands how fully she’s misjudged him. Yeah, that’s not a great way to begin a relationship, but stick with me. Surely there’s some magic still in the unexpected, in those things we can’t control and predict, those things we can’t intellectually manipulate but that seize us and drag us to where (and with whom) we should be?

I hope I’m right. Otherwise, I’ve got a lot more years of solitary squealing at this scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqidX_5ZsLg to go. Mr. Darcy’s real, and he’s out there. Maybe you just have to look at who you’ve misjudged most, and wonder if perhaps you’ve got it all wrong...

-Katie Lank

Okay, I'm convinced.  I sure hope all my mess ups turn into something good (there's a lot of them).  Now I'm going to go eat my humble pie.

-HK