You may disagree, but trust me, every girl has said at least one of these lines once: “I wish my life was like a romance movie”. “I wish my boyfriend was like [insert character here] in [insert movie here]”. “I wish love was like how it is in the movies”. Well, I’m here to tell all of you hopeful female that your hopes are in vain…because life is already like the movies.
Before we start with why, lets discuss some of the problems that girls have in their daily lives when it comes to relationships. You and your boyfriend are constantly arguing. He never does anything for you. He doesn’t buy you things unless you ask for it. He’s inconsiderate. Maybe he even cheated on you. Conflict after conflict. But if you really start looking at love stories with more depth, you’ll notice that your problems are mediocre to what they have to deal with and that the characters deal with real life problems.
The Notebook
In the Notebook, even though Ally and Noah truly love each other, they are always arguing. Ally’s mother despises Noah, and takes Ally away from him. In the future, she is engaged to someone else, but sees Noah’s picture in the paper, and goes to visit him. Soon enough, they
sleep together, causing more conflict, in which Ally breaks up with her fiancée and marries Noah, as she should.
Although I’m sure they had a very prosperous life together, the whole movie is based on the fact that Ally now has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember any of it, causing Noah to retell their story. Well, if you didn’t already know, the plan works for a minute, and at the end, both of them die.
A Walk to Remember
In A Walk to Remember, Landon is a juvenile delinquent who is forced to do community service along side of Jamie Sullivan, the school’s Christian goody-goody. Of course they end up falling in love, much to her father’s disdain, and everything is beautiful and lovely as he tries to achieve all of her wishes (which he does quite fantastically). Great, right? But soon she confesses that she is dying of leukemia, causing a whole new set of difficulties. In the end, they get married, and live their lives to the best of their abilities, until she loses her battle with the disease, and dies.
The Titanic
To be one of the best love stories, the Titanic is a clear representation of the “true-to-life” conflicts that I’m trying to portray. Jack and Rose fall in love on the infamous boat, much to the hate of her malicious “fiancée”. All is wonderful; sex in a car, painting her naked. That is, of course, until the ship sinks, causing deaths to thousands of people, including the tearful death of Jack, ending with Rose surviving at the last minute when she succeeds in whistling for a boat
If you haven’t caught on to what I’m saying by now, let me break it down for you. Without the conflicts that all of these love stories have, there would be no story. There would be nothing to interest you, just like real life. These love movies need conflict just as life does. These movies need someone to die just as your life needs a jerk of a boyfriend to upset you for a little while. These are supposed to be some of the greatest love stories ever told, but guess what…not one of these stories has a truly happy ending, just as everything in life doesn’t have a truly happy ending.
The Twilight Saga
Now, some of you may be saying, “Oh, I only like love stories that have happy endings”. Imagine what the characters had to go through to get to those endings. Let’s take the infamous Edward Cullen and Bella Swan as an example. Sure, at the end of the series they are married with a beautiful daughter, and are free to live happily ever after forever, and ever, and ever. Now, count all of the fights and depression that happened before this. Edward was a self-torturing, somber being who blamed himself for every bad occurrence of Bella’s life (which he kind of was). Bella was an obsessive, unsatisfied, confused human with ruined high school memories. The girl had four near death experiences in two years, not counting the attempts by her own hand. Adrenaline rush? Please, that girl was suicidal! Although they do end up as one big happy family, there are obstacles that they have to face in order to get to that point. How is that different from you? How is that different from every girl that had to go through three douchebag boyfriends in order to find her husband? If anything, it’s worse. I don’t see anyone I know fighting vampires, dealing with werewolves, and delivering hybrid babies who break ribs. Try going through that, and then see how badly you want to be Mrs. Edward Cullen.
You Can Have the Hollywood Story…But Do You Want It?
Another thing to think about this: Just because the movie ends, that doesn’t mean the story ends with it. In Titanic, Rose’s granddaughter is one of the characters, which means that even after Jack died, she still conceived a child by somebody else. In the original A Walk to Remember novel, the real reason why Landon visited Jamie’s father was not only to have a genuine conversation with him, but it was also to tell him that he was going to remarry (That’s something they don’t tell you in the movie). And although Edward and Bella may live happily ever after, Renesmee is a half-human/half-vampire girl, who has no one to give her advice, attached to a shape-shifting wolf. I can only imagine what she’s going to have to go through when she’s 17 years old.
Love stories are happening every day, and everybody is wishing and hoping for something that just might be staring them in the face. Think about it; do you really think Jamie Sullivan wasn’t watching romantic novels, wishing that her Leukemia would disappear so she could find her soul mate? Of course she was. She found him, but you can bet that that girl was sitting in her room, watching Romeo and Juliet, and hoping for true love to come her way.
I know that I’m only naming four movies, but if you watch any other love story, count the number of problems that they have, and then count yours. You may have more, but this doesn’t mean that they have none. And just like after you watch a tearjerker, when your own personal conflicts happen, grab a box of Kleenex, wipe your tears, and get on with your life. If you can do it for someone else’s mishaps, you can do it for yours. Don’t worry, you’ll have your own love story soon enough. But hey, that’s just my opinion.