Romantic comedies are ruining our lives!

2.1.09

I like to blame everyone but myself for relationship issues, and I’ve come to the conclusion that romantic comedies are actually to blame. To be fair, I decided this way before a study was published in Edinburgh, saying that “rom-coms spoil your love life.”
The researchers claimed that romantic comedies spoiled love lives because the viewers communicated poorly with their partners (i.e., if you love someone, they should intrinsically know). And—big surprise—romantic comedies give us unrealistic expectations about love. Clearly, the researchers in Scotland did not know that Disney has been giving little girls unrealistic expectations for years. They also claim that romantic comedies cause people to believe in predestined love.
Well, this is just junk. I communicate very well, thank you, and I stopped believing in “The One” approximately when I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny. These were not caused by romantic comedies.
What was caused by romantic comedies—aside from furthering my ideas about unrealistic relationships—was my penchant for believing that the men in romantic comedies actually exist. They don’t. And men who seem like they do are usually womanizers (cue the Britney song, please).
I have been conditioned to believe that these amazing “moments” exist in life. The clock stops, your heart skips a beat, and “Wicked Game” starts playing in the background. I find myself continually watching for these moments—how he looks at me, the way he says certain words. And I love these moments in movies.
For example, I bawl my eyes out when James Marsden looks at Katherine Heigl at the end of “27 Dresses” during their wedding. This, to me, is the pinnacle of cinematic romance. Clearly they should be together in real life, because no one can fake emotion like that! Those words actually came out of my mouth.
Likewise, I do some pretty hardcore crying during “13 Going on 30” when Jennifer Garner finally figures out that she’s meant to be with Mark Ruffalo. Where are these moments in my life and in the lives of my friends? Last I checked, we were still trying to figure out what last night meant and what he meant when he said X and Y but not Z.
Needless to say, I am looking forward to the film of “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Like many women, that book has been my Bible since it came out. It changed the way I functioned in my relationships and has given me some guiding principles with which to live my life...just like the Bible.
I’m a little nervous, though, because I know deep-down that the director has filled it with these cliché moments of realization and uber-silly romantic gestures. HJNTIY has a lot of integrity, because it’s totally true. I don’t want to come away from it feeling like crap while the book inspired me.
In a conscious effort to heed my rom-com neurosis, I have tried to stick to watching Gossip Girl reruns instead of “Enchanted” or “Win A Date With Tad Hamilton”. However, I broke down last night and watched (for the fifth time) “Sex and the City: The Movie”. And, like always, I cried like a pathetic heap of emotional garbage when Big put the Manolo on Carrie’s foot. Clearly, men on one knee with Manolos are not in the future for any of us. It just isn’t in the cards, because men really just do not do things like that. Meanwhile, romantic comedies aren’t making living with that reality any easier.