The plots of romance movies are fairly predictable: Two romantically challenged characters will meet, realize they're destined to be together, encounter a series of problems meant to separate them, but by the end they'll be wrapped in each other's arms. Cue the credits.
Sure, these fictional stories almost never mirror the trajectories of real-life romances — but good luck telling that to our subconsciouses.
Watching these story lines unfold over and over again can distort our vision of love, said Alisa Ruby Bash, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based marriage and family therapist.
"I often see young, single women who really want to get married but feel that if their date doesn't sweep them off their feet like the opening scene of a romantic comedy, that it is not worth a second date," she said.
If you've ever ended what, in hindsight, seemed like a promising relationship, go ahead and blame it on your obsession with romantic films or those Disney princess movies you watched as a kid.
"We've all grown up with that Disney model of, 'What is love?'" said Mia Adler Ozair, a clinical psychotherapist from Los Angeles and mother of nine. She said she has explained to her children, including her 5-year-old daughter, that the relationship dynamics depicted in these films don't represent reality. Real love is much more complicated.
So, while you're enjoying an entertaining romance, at least be discerning when watching it. Here are seven romantic tropes found in many love stories, which several experts jumped at the opportunity to debunk.
You'll meet "the one." Craig Malkin, clinical psychologist and instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, explained that researchers classify people's perceptions and behaviors in relationships on a scale as "destiny beliefs" or "growth beliefs." Destiny believers are more likely to subscribe to the most common romantic myths: love at first sight, love can conquer all and the notion of a designated soul mate. These people tend to have short relationships because they flee at the first signs of trouble.
"There's a passivity in (destiny) thought," Malkin said. "But love is participatory. You have to collaborate. You have to engage it. It doesn't just happen to us."
Those whose actions align more closely with growth beliefs approach love in an active way and work to improve themselves and their relationships. As a result, they tend to "have happier, longer relationships because they (understand) that love is only as strong as our commitment to it," Malkin said.
Malkin said the idea of "the one" is dangerous because it makes people think their love lives are outside of their control.
Love at first sight. Attraction at first sight? Sure — but love comes later on. Malkin said two people can certainly feel lust initially, and once they discover they're compatible and form a relationship, it's easy for them to say it was love from the start.
Mary-Lou Galician, lead professor for Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication's online program, who teaches about how love is portrayed through media, said this concept is used liberally in film and television because it's convenient. If two people need to fall in love over the span of a TV show or movie for a story to work, it has to be immediate.
Opposites attract. Chauntelle Tibbals, a public sociologist who specializes in gender, sexualities and popular culture, explained that sociologists refer to social class as "the great divider" in relationships, even more so than gender or race. Yet in movies like "Pretty Woman," "Maid in Manhattan" and even "Titanic," the characters' disparities in affluence and lifestyle are no match for their unfaltering attraction.
While people from different walks of life can certainly fall in love, the more dissimilar the day-to-day rituals and preferences of two people, the less likely they are to last, Tibbals said. Ultimately, people with vastly different world views or styles aren't likely to be compatible.
"Happily ever after" lasts forever. When a movie ends and the screen goes black, viewers are left to believe that with the hardest battle already behind them, the fictitious couple's fate is now sealed for eternity.
"Reality is not so seamless," Tibbals said. "Tragedy happens. Life happens. People just grow in different directions."
One (admittedly undramatic) path to enduring happiness with one you love?
"We need to honestly tell our partner when something doesn't work or when it makes us feel angry or rejected," said Juliana Neiman, a marriage and family therapist in New York.
Fighting means you have passion. Some films use screaming matches to depict the passion between characters. One second two people are yelling at the top of their lungs, pointing fingers in each other's faces. The next second they're wrapped in each other's arms. In real life, explosive fights rarely end with a passionate love scene. Instead, doors are slammed. People go on long walks to cool off.
Galician said fighting is prevalent in entertainment only because of the need for conflict — often the peg upon which a story's plot is hung.
Fighting can make a couple question whether they're a good match, but never fighting can have the same effect. Galician said it's imperative not to confuse fighting with passion. Plenty of happy couples never fight, and many others do.
Neiman said occasional flare-ups are fine as long as they don't happen every day and don't result in physical violence or mental manipulation.
You can change someone if you try hard enough. Remember "Beauty and the Beast," when the bookish and headstrong Belle attempts to soften the Beast's demeanor through unconditional caring? In real life, she probably would've resigned in frustration — or have been mauled.
Sometimes movie characters who are especially thoughtful and resilient can change the people they love who are flawed.
"(This idea) puts a lot of pressure on the fixer," said Galician. It can also open that person up to relationship abuse, she added.
Love can conquer all. Rom-coms often focus on the relationship between the lovers, with cursory attention to everything else. The premise, of course, is that their love will take care of anything life throws at them, because they have each other.
Unfortunately, we must accept that sometimes love is powerless to external forces. Love cannot cure illness, or prevent people from dying.
"When you think about how people deal with grief and loss, there's a lot of resentment and stress," said Tibbals. These dramatically unromantic circumstances can tear even the most devoted couples apart.
"Although you need love to get through the inevitable issues that will arise, there are too many instances where it is simply not enough to make a marriage work," Bash said.
She added that divisions on the unromantic but important subject of finances can decimate a relationship, especially if one partner likes to save and the other likes to spend.
"Financial infidelity or irresponsibility can be more devastating to discover than sexual infidelity for some couples," she said. "A couple has to decide what kind of life they want and work together to achieve their goals."
Romantic storylines may very well amplify our expectations of love beyond what will ever be feasible, but they do add some benefit, Ozair said: "(They) remind us to be optimistic about love and open to adventure ... and hit at our deep-seated hope that love will find a way."
jreynolds@tribune.com
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