From the classic “meet-cute” to falling in love, there’s a reason everyone loves romantic comedies. They make us feel good. They usually include a conflict you know will get resolved in the end, with some kind of happily ever after before the credits roll. This formulaic story provides a sense of comfort.
Rom-coms aren’t reality, but it can sometimes be easy to compare your relationships to things you see on the silver screen. Most rom-coms are light-hearted yet toxic, as they portray unrealistic and idealized versions of relationships. Let’s take a closer look at why you shouldn’t compare your relationships to these films and how you can manage real-life relationships and breakups.
Unrealistic Beauty Standards
Perhaps the worst thing about romantic comedies is the standard they set for relationships. For starters, most Hollywood actors are exceedingly attractive on screen. However, they’ve spent hours in a makeup chair and a lot of editing has been done to make everyone look perfect.
That’s not reality.
In fact, the beauty standards in rom-coms can be toxic and make you feel like you’re not good enough in your current relationship. Further, they can harm your self-esteem, causing you to settle for less than you deserve.
Many popular movies play on the idea of beauty and what makes someone desirable. Some of the most notable films that feature a female makeover that helps the lead character “get the guy” include:
- Miss Congeniality;
- The Princess Diaries;
- Pretty Woman;
- Mean Girls.
These unrealistic beauty standards can leave you feeling like you need to change your appearance to be worthy of love. That’s just not true.
Unhealthy Relationships
Let’s face it, many movies would be pretty boring if there wasn’t some sort of break from reality involved. Unfortunately, many rom-coms take things too far by pushing unrealistic expectations of love. Take a look at 1999’s Runaway Bride. The entire premise of the film focuses on a woman who continues to run away from her weddings because she doesn’t want to live a life of mundane marriage. However, her character ends up falling in love with the journalist writing a story about her within a week.
A different depiction of unrealistic situations in these movies is the conflict between the two leads. To create tension, the conflicts lead to emotional trauma for the characters — and that trauma is often left undealt with as they move on with the relationship.
In She’s All That, for example, the character Freddie Prinze Jr. portrays makes a bet with his friends that he can turn any girl in school into the prom queen. While it’s another great example of a simple makeover making a girl more desirable, the relationship part of this film is its worst transgression. As they start to fall for each other, the secret of the bet comes out, leaving the character played by Rachael Leigh Cook not only heartbroken but emotionally traumatized. Mental wellness plays a huge role in intimacy and trust in a relationship, and far too many films don’t focus on how emotional trauma can cause serious damage, both to the couple and to the individual.
Bad Breakups
Countless rom-coms feature breakups. Many of them have become known as classics over the years, including:
- When Harry Met Sally;
- Legally Blonde;
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall;
- Failure to Launch;
- How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
Unfortunately, many of these films don’t depict breakups in healthy ways. Some of them feature revenge plots. Others have characters completely changing direction and becoming someone different. Very few of them show the turmoil and stress that can be caused by a breakup, including moving out of a shared space, having to create a new budget, and relying on a social support system to get through it.
What To Watch Instead
There are so many things that rom-coms get wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t watch them at all. For entertainment purposes, they’re a lot of fun. When you need an escape from the norm, they can provide it. However, if you tend to compare your relationships with those on the big screen, it might benefit you to stick to another genre or take a break from rom-coms for a while.
Luckily, the film industry has realized this issue and created more realistic depictions of relationships in recent years. 2017’s The Big Sick is a good example of how to build trust and intimacy, even when things go wrong. While the movie might center around tense and awkward subjects, it’s a more realistic view of how to handle those situations rather than going to extremes for entertainment purposes. Isn’t It Romantic is another great movie to try, as it pokes fun at rom-com conventions without bucking them entirely. It uses those tropes to illustrate the issues of this genre without falling into those traps itself.
Stick to therapist-approved, realistic rom-coms. Keeping reality in mind, you can enjoy movies about love in a healthy way going forward.