How fairytale stories ruin girls' lives

The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don't know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.

Romance and marriage are socially constructed ideas enforced through popular fiction, sappy romance novels and movies and not to mention wannabe rock songs by former heartthrob Bon Jovi. How can a poor innocent little girl defend herself from this assault on her senses, her feelings and her very core which with enough training and brainwashing will flock like a moth to an electric light bulb to the dreamy but also unrealistic ideals of romance? The truth is no guy will run after you just because you are hurting to stop you from running away; if you publicly declare your love for him in front of complete strangers while using a microphone and a spotlight, he will run, not sigh; and men frankly care more about their goddamn ego than about what you might be feeling. Some people say that they are addicted to porn and that after watching it they might feel sullied and ashamed of themselves. Well, I feel that way…. after watching romantic comedies. Because they enforce a twisted reflection of reality and they leave you pinning after something that does not exist. Kind of like advertising creates a distorted vision of women and their role in society, these stories create a distortion of what a real relationship is like. And the truth is that it doesn’t end with the marriage or with the two people discovering they are in love with each other. Life goes on afterward and sooner or later it becomes ugly and messy and you fight and you want to strangle each other and then you don’t care anymore and you start taking each other for granted and “I love you” becomes just another way of saying goodbye and you wake up one morning and ask yourself what the hell you are doing with that stranger that you don’t love anymore and of whom you don’t understand the slightest thing. And that is when you have to make the hardest decision ever: do I stick with it and try to make it work despite everything at least for the sake of all those years that we spent together and which I don’t want to have been in vain, or do I just pick up my things and start over again. The problem with the way that these movies depict relationships is that they give you the idea that everything is supposed to always be good and happy and dreamy and that people always learn their lessons when they make mistakes. And that’s not how life is. And when life departs from that fantasy people tell themselves that their partner just isn’t right for them and that they just need to keep looking. And they keep looking and keep looking. But it’s impossible to ever find that perfection in reality. Because people aren’t perfect. And as long as we focus on our needs and on how the other person makes US feel, we’ll never manage to be happy or functional in a relationship. I saw this one movie where this guy brings his fiancée and her parents home to meet his parents. And after a fight, the groom is sitting on the porch with his father and his future father-in-law and the advice that they give him is that he needs to decide whether he wants to be right or whether he wants to be happy in his relationship because he can’t have both. That was actually kind of cute. But I never see the same being said to women… because despite our all-mightiness, we can’t take it. We want to see humble, selfless men who are so in love with us that they would be willing to throw their life away just to be with us. And that everything will be alright just as long as we love each other. But love is not enough sometimes. Sometimes I wonder whether love is even a requirement. People have fought so long against arranged marriages because they are not based on love. But what is love? And why would it be an absolute requirement for a happy life? What about respect and friendship and trust? One philosopher once said that true love is what is left after the feeling of being in love disappears. After the butterflies and the heart flutters and the light-headedness go away. What do we have left after that? What do most couple have if you take away the lust and the sex and the flirtatious excitement of new beginnings? Is it comfort? Is it understanding? Is it traditions? Is it inside jokes? Is it shared experiences? Or is it just plain nothingness? Le vide? The sad part is that the movies that actually speak of real life and real relationships, well frankly, they’re so depressing that you don’t really want to see them. Take Blue Valentine for example. That was a painful movie to watch. But it speaks volumes about how couples can become estranged and how even your best efforts are not enough sometimes. But I don’t know one person who would want to watch it on a Friday evening. Because we all want to see the happy and positive side of relationships. Sometimes with the risk of becoming blind to their other facets.

We are all brainwashed nowadays. Men with porn and women with romantic comedies. But where is the true world in all that?