When I first saw the trailer for the 2026 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, I immediately knew that I had to watch it. And when my talking stage, Michael*, asked me if I had any ideas for our first date, only one thing came to mind: forcing him to sit through a Victorian-era, erotic gothic romance movie and interrogating him on his thoughts afterwards.
As someone who is truly prone to being in toxic relationships, I’ve become a lot more cautious about who I choose to spend my time with. This includes FaceTime calls before hanging out with a man, interrogating him about his political views, and early-on soft-launching the idea of not wanting something casual. So, when I got into my first talking stage a year post-toxic relationship breakup, I was surprised to have him check all of my boxes. Well, besides him not watching Heated Rivalry (not because he’s homophobic — he very much is not) because he just doesn’t grasp the pure amount of intimacy and connection featured throughout. I decided to look past it.
However, being someone who constantly attracts emotionally immature men, I wanted to know if Michael could empathize with that intense level of raw, unfiltered longing, or if he was just another guy who checked out the second a situation got emotionally heavy. Call it the “Heathcliff Test” (or maybe it’s just plain old psychological warfare), but I needed to know if he could handle the absolute chaos and tragedy of a man like Heathcliff, who spent his entire life yearning for a woman he couldn’t have.
The date itself started pretty great. We got dinner before the movie, the banter was amazing, he was really cute and insisted on paying for everything, and our chemistry was pretty strong. I walked into the theater nervous, knowing that this movie would completely make or break everything. I was also pretty nervous that I’d have to awkwardly sit through a movie with tons of sex scenes, as I’d been warned by plenty of my friends that there were some spicy scenes in the movie.
Thankfully, the movie wasn’t nearly as spicy as I thought it would be. I was more enamored with Cathy and Heathcliff’s chemistry and found the intimate scenes to be full of gutwrenching emotion rather than just being raunchy sex scenes with zero meaning. Truthfully, I didn’t find the spicy scenes to be awkward at all, TBH — and neither did he.
I went in expecting to love the movie. What I did not expect, however, was to be full-blown sobbing at the end of the movie. I don’t mean a few tears dripping down my cheeks — I mean undeniable hysterics. Michael even tried putting his hand on my thigh, as he’d done earlier in the movie, to comfort me, but I truly had to un-recline my seat, sit up, and just sob during the last ten minutes of the movie. When the credits rolled, he turned to me. I turned to him, then put my face in my hands and ugly-cried as “Chains of Love” by Charli xcx played.
However, I knew I was tasked with one goal — to find out what Michael’s thoughts on the film were. And thankfully, I can report that (drumroll please…) he honestly loved it! He told me how he admired the storytelling aspect, and thought it was an incredible, yet gut-wrenchingly sad, movie — he even said that he almost cried at the sight of me crying. An empathetic man! His only gripe? “Maybe a little more focus on the side characters would’ve made this movie even better,” he texted to me in his post-movie review. “I’m just a boy.”
I honestly felt so relieved that I’d found a man who was able to appreciate the sentiment of a heartbreaking Victorian-era romance movie, while also wanting to comfort me when I was upset. And when he brought up a second date, I obviously said yes. In that moment, Michael didn’t just pass the test; he set the bar. Had he laughed during my tears, spoken negatively about the film, or even hinted that my reaction was the slightest bit overdramatic, I would’ve chosen to never see him again, TBH. It’s a reminder that we shouldn’t have to minimize our emotions to fit into a “cool girl” mold. A man who appreciates a gothic romance and doesn’t get scared off by a few (OK, a lot) of tears? Sign me TF up.
In a world full of “u up?” texts and men who are allergic to feelings, finding someone who doesn’t recoil at a face full of runny mascara and genuine emotion feels like a fever dream. So, let this be a lesson to you: If he can’t handle you at your “sobbing to Charli xcx in a dark movie theater” state, he definitely doesn’t deserve you at your best.