In the movies the guy almost always wins the girl in the end.

Of course, he first has to deal with obstacles, mistrust, poor timing, and all manner of pitfalls, but in the end, some grand gesture will usually win her heart.

Then the credits roll and most everyone assumes that the couple will live happily ever after.

Not I.

I know that reality will soon set in, and that's when the real tests will begin.

This is the problem with grand gestures. The other person falls for it, not you. It's like some elaborate bait-and-switch scam. You fall in love with a person that only exists for a moment then, once that moment has passed, you're stuck in a relationship with a comparatively boring person.

What happened, you wonder, to the person that threw everything away to be with you? What happened to the person that serenaded you, that sent flowers to you at work, that walked through the desert to profess their love and bare their chest as if to say my heart is yours, you may do with it whatever you wish?

That person no longer exists. Born of a moment of passion and desperation, that person ceased to be the instant the moment had passed.

I've made a grand gesture a few times in the past. It's got me laid more than once (though that was not my sole intention), and it got me a relationship that lasted a few weeks.

It's also at times been met with rejection and scorn.

And there's the rub.

To put it all on the line of course means risking it all. This is scary enough, but to risk it all with a lie, with a grand gesture that, if successful, will shortly be held up as the standard by which the entire relationship will be measured - that strikes me as insane.

Then again, I guess love is a form of insanity.