Have movies and rom-coms taken away our ability to be realistic about love?

As referenced in millennial lingo, a hopeless romantic is someone who holds idealistic and often delusional views on love, despite all evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, unlike any other personality trait like extroversion or anger management issues, ‘hopeless romanticism’ spread as a phase and a personality type only in the 1920s with the advent of literary magazines. “They repeatedly fall in love or chase after love for love’s sake, even when it’s impractical, unwise, or unseemly,” explain psychologists. With the rise of Hollywood, ardent audience members were inundated with more options in the ‘romance-comedy’ genre, bringing impossible love in vogue and sending the number of hopeless romantics skyrocketing.

Undoubtedly, romcoms are sweet movie-binge material and make for stress-free entertainment, but its rapid insurgence and lack of self-awareness has stuffed the audience with unrealistic expectations of love, often wrapped up in cliches.

Over time, it has left us in pursuit of a seemingly grand ‘movie love’, sometimes at the expense of the real-life story that life is weaving at the moment. It capitalizes on our need to be understood by showing couples who complete each other’s sentences or read the other’s mind, even though communication is the bedrock of good relationships in real life. It idolizes men and women as mysterious, aspirational and seductive, making the good ones seem boring and uneventful. Finally, with their mediocre writing compensated for with big-budget destination weddings, song and dance sequences, and good-looking heartbreakers, it confuses love with showmanship and extravagance, a mistake the hopeless romantics often don’t realize until it is too late.

Biological anthropologist and self-help author Helen Fisher calls romantic love the “mother of all modern addictions with positive influences if returned.” But when it’s projected on a 70mm screen packaged with dopamine-inducing highs and served up with popcorn, it’s hard to refuse its siren call in favor of realism and level-headed love.

If you identify as a hopeless romantic, chances are you have completely bought into the myth of romantic love being the most sought-after equation two people can share. That all other accomplishments in life somehow lose meaning if you don’t have a special someone to share them with. And most of all, that love is a resounding, operatic emotion, with highs and lows so addictive that you never want to get off the roller coaster. Sorry to burst the bubble, but that sort of love neither lasts nor is it good for you.

Both cinema and its ardent audience need an understanding that life is more to life than love, and it does not represent your greatest victory or your inherent worth as a person. Furthermore, your relationship with yourself and your motivations in life take precedence over someone who promises to bring you the moon. So, as far as finding ‘the one’ is concerned, hang in there. Oh, we don’t mean hang in for finding them, rather on being ‘The One’ that you can be proud of.