I'm sure many of you have seen a RomCom. Specifically, I'm sure you've seen the type that had a story including a scenario of a lost, cynical, maybe even hopeless, individual comes in contact with another who's whimsical and carefree. Think "500 Days of Summer," in which the main male character pursues a lost love as an antidote for his pain. This kind of story is generally known as one with a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," where the love of someone who loves life saves another from giving up. Stories like these are undoubtedly attractive to the consumer, romanticizing the process of falling in love in a way that makes it seem to transcend all other worldly obstacles. However, while this can be true in certain respects, the concept of love curing mental illness oversimplifies the idea of recovery to a staggering extent. This is probably one of the most damaging things about our media's treatment of mental illness.

When I first entertained the idea of letting myself fall in love I couldn't take the pressure. There was so much riding on the possibility of adopting a whole new type of life, and I didn't want to screw it up. I was expecting a Nicholas Sparks type of romance, where my world turns upside down and brightens, dashing any negative emotions I ever had, not to mention the background soundtrack of cheesy pop songs. I thought my own personal love story had to be like the Young Adult movies I had seen and books I had read or else it wasn't reaching its ultimate potential. The prospect of accepting supposedly sub-par love scared me, and, in my mind, it clearly wouldn't free me from the cynical, anxious, depressed mind I wrestled with on a daily basis. I was determined to do it perfectly on the first try, and since there is no such thing as perfection, especially in human relationships, there very well could have never been any such thing as me falling in love.

This hesitation almost cost me the most important relationship I've ever been a part of, and I place a large portion of the blame on the media's portrayal of mental illness as something that can be cured by romance. How I see it, if we were talking about love curing diabetes or asthma, would you believe it? Would you hold love to that kind of standard? No, you wouldn't (or at least I'd hope not). In reality, both love and mental illness as entities suffer when stories like these are pursued in life.

Firstly, love is as diverse as the species of our planet, and to expect to find a certain kind often closes people off from finding it in unexpected places. The fact that we are force-fed so many scenarios of "perfect" love between traditionally beautiful people leaves a lot of us petrified in the face of the ordinary. Also, the fact that we are exposed to people being "fixed" by the love of another causes people to seek a love in which they feel like they're changing their significant other's outlook or behavior. This can put such unprecedented stress on the people in relationships that it can breed resentment for the other's flaws and differences.

Finally, these types of stories are particularly unfair to those living with mental illness. It is no secret that we all draw inspiration and expectation from the omnipresent media, and to insist that the right amount of quality romance can quell clinical depression or anxiety (and any other types of these broad disorders) may very well be influencing the way the world views mental illness as a whole. It is true that love can eradicate loneliness, chase off boredom, and maybe even "cure" sadness, but mental illness is much more complex than single emotions. Since mental disorders (especially depression) are often dismissed as simple, human emotions that are not being handled properly, the promotion of love as the panacea further perpetuates that misconception. This is especially the case for women with stress/anxiety issues, who face the idea that they "need a man" or "need to get laid" on a regular basis in order to ease their overactive minds.

I definitely felt pressured by the possibility that love would cure me, and in turn put pressure on the relationship itself, expecting it to look and feel a certain way. It wasn't until I realized that love does not perfect life, but enriches it, that I was able to allow it to wash over me. Love, in all of its forms, is not the antidote to suffering (in any of its forms), but is what makes all of our suffering worth it. To put that kind of an expectation on something as organic as human connection is to stifle it, and who wants that?

In the end, promising that love will cure a clinical illness is to leave those with mental illness less than fulfilled by their relationships. It's setting us up to wonder why our love isn't doing it for us, and, in turn, setting us up to resist the idea of love in its entirety. We need to be reminded that, in reality, depression and anxiety are, in their basest sense, chemical imbalances, and no amount of forehead kisses, late night movie sessions, or sex can change that.

We need authentic stories in the media, showing us that romance and mental illness can, and do, coexist on a daily basis, and that doesn't make love any less powerful or beautiful. It just means that life is much more complicated than that.

And, though it may not always feel so, complexity is stunning.