Movies Are Teachers.

What are Movies teaching you about Love and relationship? Most of us agree we don’t spend enough time in Western culture learning to Love well. If you are like me, you learned on the fly. I caught way more than I was taught. There are some teachers that we don’t even know are teaching us until we step back and ask how we know what we know. In the case of romance, Love, relationship and sex that teacher is often movies. Rather it’s the fairy tales of childhood or the rom coms of middle school, or the adult movies that twisted some hearts in the name of Love. We learned a lot from the movies we watched and why wouldn’t we? They are often beautiful and have a amazing soundtrack. They teach lessons that seem so good in the moment. But what if the teacher is wrong?

What if we sit in the dark theater and learn things that are completely counter productive? What if everything you learned about Love was taught by a teacher who had no other objective than to sell you a ticket? If you knew that, would you let that teacher lecture you on how to find and keep healthy Love and relationship? Of course not but that is the unintended result of what we do! We take open minds and expose to ideas that actually may make them more likely to be abused. We give them nothing to compare the images to empower them to balance the fantasy with reality. Let’s look at a few themes we often see in popular movies over the decades and see if you recognize any of them.

Quiz on Lessons About Love in Movies?

So, what are movies are teaching you about Love and relationship? Lets take a quick quiz on a few popular movies and their basic lessons:

1. A classic movie that teaches you to change for the one you Love. They meet and have a fling but He lives a different kind of life in the real world so she changes to fit in. Hints: pick up smoking and ditch the modest dress for leather pants.
2. Another classic movie where the children can reunite divorced parents because they got divorced for no real reason. The parents don’t even know. There is a “happily ever after” once they realize they just didn’t understand each other. Hint: Teenage twins know better than the adults and never throw a hair brush.
3. Can you name a popular movie that rewards the male lead for stalking the female for a date, for bonding purpose; often with no encouragement from the female? A few are even to the point of being illegal. Hint: can’t give you one here..too many movies!
4. How many fairy tales depict helpless men or women. Rather its isolation or financial ruin Love is the only way to bring them back to a fulfilled life..oh and a single life is not a fulfilled one!

Here are the answers. I have no doubt you can come up with more examples and other questionable lessons! Please pop some in the comments!

1.Grease 2.Parent Trap 3. Love Actually, Say Anything, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Notebook, Twilight, Something About Mary 4. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and Bridget Jones Diary

You Know They Love When They..Stalk You?

Really? It’s actually harmless right? After all these are not textbooks telling us these things are good! We have to go out of our way to read a book, movies find us. It’s easy to let movies guide our thoughts on Love; especially in the vulnerable teenage years. Julia R. Lippman, a professor from University Of Michigan, has done some in depth work on this subject(1). She discovered women who were regularly exposed to romantic comedies had a stronger belief that “Love will find a way”. This magical view of Love diminishes concepts like choice, compatibility and work from the reality of Love. If we can be encouraged to accept less than realistic aspects of conjured relationships do we accept anything that is dangerous?

If watching rom-coms can trick us into believing Love is a magic spell that will always find us and get us that happy ending we paid for; is it possible that it will also train our minds to ignore things we should notice? What if they normalize or even praise behaviors that are harmful? Lippman surveyed 426 women and the findings were telling. After they watched movies that depicted abuse such as Sleeping With the Enemy, they were less tolerant of over the top stalking and pursuit that pushed the envelope of privacy and safety(2). Many of the popular movies glamorized relentless pursuit even when asked to stop. Things like Over the top gestures done in the name of true Love. Love only one of partners is convinced of. We have to step back and critically think what is safe to accept in Love and Relationship.

Relearning the Lessons

How can we navigate these waters for ourselves and for those who will follow us? For starters we need to know what REAL Love is. We need to understand what builds the kind of Love that lasts. It’s not the fairy tale story that sweeps you off your feet and stares at you while you sleep. (thanks for that creepy one Edward from Twilight) It’s not obsession and unwanted pursuit. It’s getting to know someone and slowly moving towards a mutual and consensual relationship. Healthy Love requires we listen to what the movie are portraying about Love and compare it to what we know it really is. So, we ask, “what are movies teaching you about Love and relationship?”, maybe more than you know but with a little thinking we can minimize the problems this can create in our off screen world.

Real Love shines compared to the magical view of Love we can’t trust will endure. It has qualities that make the imaginary version pale in comparison. It’s important to get familiar with Real Love and not accept the edits pushed on us that it is lack luster without the adrenaline rush we see in movies. We need to know what is real to identify what is fake.

One way I define real Love vs. Fake is how it is lived out. Please check out this to consider this in more depth. https://worththewar.com/trading-in-modern-love-for-the-real-kind/

Of course we should enjoy movies, look at the stunning sets and amazing costumes but refuse to let it take away from the beauty of reality! The messy, emotional, challenging kind of Love that lasts decades after the fairy tale versions have been relegated to a pile of unwatched DVD’s. Look for examples in the real world for the pattern you will use to build the relationship of your Life! Isn’t it time we stopped letting unhealthy ideas shape our view of Love? Let’s take this knowledge and get it out to our circle!

Thanks for joining me in this battle!

Love Well or Not at All.

(1)https://www.joinonelove.org/learn/5-movies-that-normalize-stalking-irl/ , https://news.umich.edu/isn-t-it-romantic-movies-tv-shows-strongly-shape-how-we-view-love/

(2) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/03/rom-coms-women-stalker-myth-study#img-1

(3) https://worththewar.com/trading-in-modern-love-for-the-real-kind/

Next Article will be” 10 lies you can’t believe about Love in popular culture”