To all the girls out there who have once shared my feelings that guys don’t care about romance, remember this: Nicholas Sparks is a guy. Well, I suppose he should be referred to as a man. A man with a vision.
Didn’t your mother teach you not to generalize? The idea that all guys lack emotion is such a classic stereotype. It probably makes the sensitive ones like Nicholas Sparks feel the way you feel when a guy calls you a psycho for being emotional.
Not good.
Most of Sparks’ movies have dramatic titles with something in common: “The.” The Notebook, The Choice, The Last Song, The Lucky One… you get the picture. And they have something more important in common: The… then the “Story”.
One of my ex-boyfriends told me that I expected too much from him. He said I was a hopeless romantic who wanted him to act like a movie character.
Hence the “ex“-boyfriend.
I have high standards, I’ll admit that. But I wasn’t asking him to create some alternate universe where we came from two different worlds, were separated by a life-threatening event, and surpassed all odds because of our undying love. I just wanted a story. One with moments to look back on and replay in my head over and over again. It didn’t have to come with a dramatic title or a breathtaking trailer with two people making out in the middle of a downpour. It didn’t have to be shown in theaters across the country to hopeless romantics and Sparks enthusiasts. The only people who needed to be able to watch the story was us.
Love stories inspire our hearts. They keep sparks alive (and keep Sparks rolling in the cash). Not every moment is sunshine and rainbows. But the moments that make us feel like sunshine and rainbows are the moments that keep our hearts happy.
Spontaneity, passion, and presence. The characters in Sparks’ works always seem to have these three qualities. Every Nicholas Sparks movie is predictable, and they can be arguably repetitive. But the satisfaction of knowing that every time we sit down to watch one of these movies with Ben and Jerry we will find spontaneity, passion, and presence is what keeps our hearts buying into The Story each time.
Guys, too, can feel like sunshine and rainbows. They can tap into their inner Nicholas Sparks. They just have to be willing to start writing The Story, and we have to be willing to wait for the one who will.