It's Sunday night and all you want is a bowl of Ben & Jerry's (half-baked flavor, of course) and a chick flick. Every girl knows the ultimate go-to: Nicholas Sparks. Now, most guys hate on his books and movies, but us girls all know they have at least seen one of his sappy romance stories. Boys don't shy away just yet; his movies are not all tear-jerkers like you think. However, his movies do tend to build up fictitious dream-boys that girls yearn for. Although Sparks' movies are enjoyable, even for boys sometimes, there are some reasons Nicholas Sparks' movies may have been the worst thing to happen to boys.
First of all, girls create this fantasy that all boys should be like the ones portrayed in Sparks' movies. Unfortunately, most guys are nowhere near as chiseled, emotionally available, or romantically inclined as the characters in these films. Nicholas Sparks really knows how to kill a guy's game with these actors otherworldly good looks, too. I mean, c'mon, you are just not going to find a boy as good looking or romantic as someone like Channing Tatum. Also, if you see a Liam Hemsworth or Zac Efron walking around campus, I call first dibs. The movies are great, don't get me wrong, but I feel for some guys when they are expected to be like them in every aspect. It's the classic “guy sees the girl and makes a perfect romantic gesture and boom they are in love" scenario. Yes, I realize most men find that this is totally unreasonable, but you can't blame a girl for wanting what she sees in the movies, right?
Which brings me to another reason guys hate romantic love stories. It puts this image in girls' heads that guys should go above and beyond for them every second of the day. Not saying that it wouldn't be nice, but it's a little bit much. I will admit, I am even guilty of it, but our expectations shoot through the roof every time we walk out of a movie theatre from a Nicholas Sparks film. Who doesn't want a devastatingly good-looking military man or cowboy? If you're a boy that willingly takes his girl to see chick flicks, let me give you some advice. Don't. Take her to see an action movie or scary movie. That way she didn't see the cute romantic gestures made in the rom com and you won't be getting yelled at later for not doing some of them. Yeah, pretty sneaky, I know. She'll probably end up seeing it later with her girls anyway, but that way you could at least use the excuse that you never saw the movie to know about how “cute" it was.
Boys, we get it. We understand that most of the time what we ask for is asking a lot, and usually it can be unreasonable and high maintenance. But what you boys don't get is that as long as Nicholas Sparks keeps writing books, girls are really never going to change their expectations.
