How Romantic Comedies Lie To Us
Author: Onur Sarikas

Men and women, bless us all. We shall never truly understand
one another. I think we've all resigned ourselves by now to the
fact that we're going to have our ins and outs. We'll all
experience both the bitter pain of heartbreak and the blissful
joy of love. It's a cliche to expect a rampant, torrid love
affair in your life; the love at first sight, rip each other's
clothes off, then get married and live happily into your autumn
years, aging gracefully as you watch your grandchildren win the
big sports game. No one can realistically expect that to happen,
but not because love is a fantastical myth. Love is very real
indeed, but the problem that we all have with finding it is that
people like Mel Gibson and Jude Law have completely ruined the
idea of romantic love.

It's not all flowers and happiness. Just as often, and even
more importantly, it's anguish, torture and compromise. Our
interactions are fueled by the awkward sadness and anger that
drives us all to love in the first place, not by the insane
Hollywood drivel that we see every time we enter a movie
theater. So what are we, the common man, supposed to do in a
landscape of garbage like this? The problem is that our
expectations have been elevated so insanely by devils like
Matthew McConaughey and Josh Hartnett. The simple truth is that
real love, the kind that is in the grasp of everyone, isn't like
that.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? You meet on a cruise and she
spills a cocktail on you during a fancy dinner at the captain's
table, then you go through a fumbling and innocent courtship in
which one of you is constantly supplying some sort of comic
relief. Maybe one of you is sexually inexperienced, that's
always good for a laugh. However, despite what Ben Stiller would
like you to believe, romance is much more complicated and
beautiful than that. The connection that two humans can forge is
so much harder to maintain than the quick, easy,
breakup-then-get-back-together formula that we've all become
accustomed to.

Scripted Romance

We should all be striving to break away from the impossible
circumstances that we see in the movies, the unattainable goal
that is the heated love affair. It may sound defeatist, but it's
really not. It's not even a realist's view of the whole
courtship ritual; I just refuse to believe that anything that is
truly beautiful and holy can be captured on celluloid film.
Whatever is going on in the chambers of the human heart is a
strange and foreign beast, one that will not be slayed by
romantic platitudes.

The happiest parts of my romantic life have been the pointless
little interactions that weren't worthy of a big budget film,
things that would get a screenwriter fired. And I wouldn't trade
any of them for even a chance at a wacky sea-faring adventure.
So my advice is this: stop waiting to be swept off of your feet
by someone who will take you on a rollercoaster ride of romance
and excitement, stop expecting to stumble onto a love that is
pure as the driven snow and will last until time immemorial.
Love is not going to be crammed into the spaces you've made for
it. You cannot control what shape or form it will take. It will
tell you what it wants to do, but you can enjoy the ride, go
nuts. Fall madly in love at every opportunity and really throw
yourself into something that is beautiful and innocent, but
don't expect it to be bullied into the constraints that you have
made for it, because real love is something that will not be
changed or shaped. We're spectators in this enterprise,
passengers at best, and that's the way it should be.

Infatuation fades, love lasts

Psychologists are now saying that humans can only stay in love,
or what we recognize as love, for a period of 18 months. Just a
year and a half and then it changes; it evolves into something
else. That warm, fuzzy feeling that we all strive to retain
indefinitely, its shelf life is just six short seasons, roughly
the same longevity as your average sitcom, and we should stop
trying to change that. We'll never be able to prolong our
infatuations or our devotions past their natural and organic
life. We can't make love last one second longer than it wants
to, and that's the best part of it. Love is a challenge, it's
never easy, it's always extremely rewarding, but it's nearly
impossible to force. So don't try to, let these things happen,
because what they can be is so much better than what you'll try
to make them.


About The Author: Author is co-founder of
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men and women. GirlsAskGuys offers hundreds of articles about
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