We grew up watching and believing romantic movies as perfect depictions of how a love life should be. We started with the Disney Princesses, progressed to our high school musical era, and finally the Nicholas Spark movies. All our lives we are captivated by love stories and long for our own fairy tales. But our passion for on-screen romance could be interfering with our real-life romantic happiness.
A recent study examining the habits of successful couples and their less fortunate counterparts found that Watching romantic comedies lowers relationship satisfaction.
That makes sense. When we see an unlikely and endearing romance on screen, we think, "That could happen to me". Then let's look at the person on sit next to us, fumbling with his phone and wearing grey sweatpants stained with Chinese food. Of course we're unhappy.
On a date night, we might skip those romantic comedies and instead watch something about car chases, Abraham Lincoln, or stormtroopers.
Compared to the guy who got shot or the guy in the white plastic work uniform, our life looks pretty good. Our romantic contentment can float, unaffected by our film choices.
But is the solution that straightforward?
In the long run, Throughout our lives we observe the same sequence of events over and over again. In each of these romantic comedies, the girl breaks up with the guy just as the shit hits the fan and gets back together with him as the story happily moves towards a happy ending.
At some point it gets stuck in our heads that a partner is synonymous with happy endings.
We don't just expect to find an unbearably beautiful partner who is willing to run through an airport with a dozen roses to explain her feelings to us, we feel like we can't be happy until we find her. Romance movies have led us to both an intense need for relationships and an unrealistic expectations of relationships.
Real people are flawed, insecure, vulnerable, and afraid of rejection. They focus on passing their midterms and finding an internship; they don't have the time or energy to fully commit to. Relationships are more complicated, scary, and far more uncomfortable than Hollywood would have us believe.
Our obsession with romantic movies prepares us for failure and disappointment in real life. Because these films are also primarily marketed to women, they affect women more than men. When romance is the central conflict in women-oriented films, the media leads us to believe that the central conflict in a woman's life, her destiny, is also about her romantic life.
These romance novels, with their imaginative plots and incredibly heartfelt emotions, create skewed gender frames for their audiences.
The woman's life and her happy ending come together only after she successfully finds her husband. His main goal in life is to find a partner.
In communication theory, experts believe that the media, by what it shows, dictates what we think is important, and affects our perceptions of what are the most important behaviours or offers us actions to emulate in our own lives.
You might want to read the last statement again
Thanks for reading Sayonaara 🖐
This my entry for the @Hivelearners community contest
You can also participate here
Congratulations @sam9999! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):
Your next target is to reach 200 posts.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
good writer. I agree with what has been written
Thanks for the acknowledgement.
yes friend thank you
Unrealistic expectations indeed. In life, people have more trouble than having to try to leave up to fictional characters. We just have to come to terms with that sad truth.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
You are very much welcome
This could not have been better said anyway else. You hit the nail on the head.
it is practically a preparation for failure if anyone gets obsessed with such wrong philosophies.
a lot of people compare their relationships with that in the movies , that is failure wearing a beautiful cloth pretending to be something good and worthwhile