Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe it’s the up and down and back and forth of the waves. Maybe it’s purely a sense of adventure—when you’ve been out at sea for a while, you’re going to feel spoony. And you’re going to make mistakes. There are reasons that most shipboard romances fail; failure’s even more likely if you hop off the deck and join your lover in the water. You’ll end up awash in narcissists, teases, and love bombers there just as likely as on land, and the monstrous breakups at sea are even more devastating. Too many of us have lost our limbs as well as our self-esteem and our ability to trust.

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Proceed with caution. Here there be dragons.

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Charisma, Love Bombs, and Spite: the Sea Serpents and Dragons

 

I understand the attraction. Long, muscular bodies, glittering scales, a tail or two to twine around and make you feel really held … Sea serpents and dragons are the Clark Gables and Gal Gadots of the maritime world. It’s always dazzling when Clark Gable and Gal Gadot want you. Especially when they can breathe fire, even underwater. So you may pine for a creature such as Chile’s Coi Coi-Vilu, the serpentine god or goddess who rules over all sea life—just don’t expect your affection to be returned to the same degree.

 

Your sense of awe and helplessness should have told you something. Big oceanic reptiles have charisma to burn, and they are certainly masters and mistresses of the Grand Romantic Gesture. They make you feel wanted. But just as with any two-legged date, you have to be careful not to get swept away:

 

These lovers are toxic.

 

Take the Bakunawa of the Philippines, for example. Whether you consider him a dragon or a serpent, you have to remember that you are not the only girl or guy for whom he’s put on a show. He likes causing tidal waves, and he lives to work up an eclipse. With all these fancy stunts, you may be hearing a first-date I love you, but what he’s saying is I love you right now, but you know, things change. Love bombers never mention that their disarming declarations have an expiration date.

 

Sometimes you and your sea serpent tick along so happily for a while that you start to scoff at the naysayers. You remind your friends that Warren Beatty was a notorious mimbo before he met Annette Bening. Your friends are then right to remind you about Jörmungandr, also known as the Midgard Serpent or the World Serpent of Norse mythology. When über-god Odin lobbed Jörmungandr into the sea, the snake grew so big that he has now encircled the globe and holds his own tail in his mouth. (Fun fact: There is a way to tell what part of a serpent is the tail—just look for everything after his anus.) He’s got the whole world in his scales, and you are just one tiny part of that co-dependent, ultimately self-involved relationship.

 

But this is one vindictive narcissist. The moment someone demands enough attention to make him stop sucking his tail, he’ll writhe his way onto land and spray poison into the air and sea, bringing on Ragnarök.

 

Trust me, you do not want to be around for Ragnarök, much less be the cause of it.

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Empty Promises: the Sirens 

 

No creature has greater charisma than the sirens. They’re beautiful, yes, and they have throaty, seductive voices … Whether you believe that they are women from the waist up and fish down below, or as Homer (mistakenly, I think) did, that they are half bird instead, they are inextricably identified with the ocean and with seduction. Their songs promise dreams fulfilled. Best of all, they promise that you will be fulfilled, that you’re as gorgeous and clever and talented as they are.

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Sadly, this is probably a lie. They are supernatural beings, after all, and we mortals can’t quite compete. But the promises are so beautiful!

 

No one is better at wrapping you around her littlest fin than a siren, but
a tryst with her is designed to end in destruction. She wants you to crash your ship into the rocks or fling yourself into the sea to catch her. The sailors of C.S. Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader explain it well: The clouded water over which songs are floating is not where your daydreams and wishes come true but where your dreams do—it’s the space of living nightmares.

 

In short, a siren makes you feel great until she wrecks you utterly upon the rocky shores of a fake relationship.

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You can still dream big for yourself. Just don’t listen to a monster who tries convince you she can give you the world. Wait for the one who loves where you are and helps you get further.

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The Tease: Cetus 

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To the ancient Greeks, ketos referred generically to any sea monster, but when most of us see the name in its Latin form, we think of one enormous sinister beast with a body as big as a ship and a head as tall as a house. The Greeks described Cetus as a sort of spiky dolphin, with spines a foot and a half thick—think of a water-bound stegosaurus with a snaking tail and the face of a boar or a dog. He is the forefather of dragons, the taunter of virgins, the monster who gave his name to an order of sea creatures, the cetaceans. He spends most of his time bobbing along in the waters offshore, waiting for the Greeks to get tired of a girl and toss her to him.

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In fact, Cetus seems to enjoy threatening more than devouring. If you are serious about offering him a victim, you have to chain her up until he can be bothered to make a move. The Trojan princess Hesione had to wait so long
(naked, no less) that Hercules had time to travel a far piece and make a bargain with her father for her rescue. When Cetus finally showed up, he swallowed not the girl but the hero, who then spent the next few days hacking his way out of the monster’s belly.

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Andromeda, seen above [See it on the EL website] with a snakier Cetus, waited even longer than Hesione, such that her man Perseus was able to wing his way over and slay Cetus—again just as the monster opened his enormous maw. Perseus waved Medusa’s head around and turned Cetus to stone. Reports of his death, however, may be greatly exaggerated. There will always be a Cetus.

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I submit that this monster must be more interested in the heroes than the heroines. Why else would he wait so very long to taste the girls’ flesh and move in just as the guys showed up?

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You don’t need a Cetus in your life. When you’re undressed and tied up, you deserve all of your lover’s attention. If that’s what you’re into.