If you're a girl, chances are you enjoy a good romantic comedy from time to time. Sometimes we watch them with friends and sometimes we even binge watch them by ourselves with a gallon of ice cream after a break up. There is just something comforting about the idea of everyone having a one true love out there. I know I certainly enjoy them (my personal favorite is "The Proposal" because, you know, Ryan Reynolds). It's perfectly fine to love romcoms, but looking back through my teen years, I see how damaging it is to try and model your relationships off the standards in these films.
For starters, we don't have one person we're meant to spend our lives with. The truth is, there are hundreds of people we haven't even met that we could be compatible with. Do I love my boyfriend? Of course I do. He is the one person who keeps me relatively sane. But is he my "soulmate"? No. In fact, if we hadn't gone to the same high school, we probably would have ever even spoken. If I had been born and raised in Hawaii instead of Indiana would fate bring us together? No, we mostly likely would be dating completely different people. Who you date is basically who is in your area and who comes along first.
The reason I see this as such a problem for young women is because we tend to try and make people who are just obviously so wrong for us our soulmates. It's the kind of mentality that keeps so many people in bad relationships. Take the popular Nicholas Sparks movie "A Walk to Remember". It is a classic example of the good-girl-turns-bad-boy-good trope that is so common in Hollywood. If the movie had panned out realistically at all, Landon would've been a terrible boyfriend to Jamie. The sad truth is, people rarely change. And if they do change, it's mostly likely for themselves, not because some pretty girl came along and batted her eyelashes. I know there have probably been exceptions to this, but it is definitely not a common thing that happens. If we want fulfilling and successful relationships, we shouldn't seek out people we need think need to change. It's unfair to expect your significant other to change for you when you should really just try to find someone who you will work better with.
Not only can romcoms keep us in bad relationships, but they can ruin perfectly healthy ones as well. After you've been in a relationship for so long, the sparks are gone. You don't get that excited nervous feeling when you see them anymore and you stop caring so much about what you look like in front of them. You are no longer afraid of hurting each other's feeling and you both become more vocal when you find something upsetting. Long gone are the butterflies and now you have a sense of comfortableness in their place. This is when many start to doubt their relationships. Very rarely does Hollywood portray soulmates as two people watching Netflix at 3 PM with their pajamas still on. There is a very popular notion that if you are with your soulmate, you will always have butterflies and everything is always perfect. But in real life, people who love each other argue and sometimes even look ugly. It's healthy and it goes on in every healthy relationship. Sure, maybe you miss the excitement of a first date, but that doesn't mean your relationship has gone bad. It just means that you've become really close with someone. This stage is when a lot of people decide to leave their relationships in pursuit of another one. If you have valid reasons for breaking up, then that's fine. But you may want to reconsider if you're only doing it because it's not as exciting as it used to be. Maybe looking up fun date ideas or trying new activities with your significant other will help. Whatever your situation is, I can promise you that if you continually break off relationships in search of a perfect one every time they stop being exciting, you will be searching forever.
No one besides us decides what we do or who we'll be with in life. Not fate or destiny, but us. Our relationships are only as successful as the effort we put into them. Romantic comedies are fine every now and then but it's important to remember not to take them too seriously.
