The Upper Case Romantic Explained.

I was glancing through a local paper today and came across one of those multi-page bridal features, the sort that use commercially disingenuous terms like ‘your special day,’ and which are known and hated by all but around 2% of the female population (and some of their mothers, I suppose.) I groaned and hurried on as usual, but then I realised that they suggest what is possibly the best way to describe (for those to whom it needs describing) the difference between a romantic and a Romantic.

To a romantic, the wedding day is special because it’s the happy occasion when a person enters into a supposedly binding contract with their life partner. To a Romantic, it’s special because it's the unhappy day on which he or she gives up on the search for the ideal (even though he or she knows that it probably doesn’t exist.) There’s nothing wrong with either, but that’s why they’re different.