I know I’m terrible with romance. It wasn’t the problem of attracting people to me. I held a number of relationships throughout my life. It was keeping those relationships that was my struggle. I had crushes when I was growing up, as most people do, but I never did anything about them. They were just people I liked and admired, but never had the real urge to try and go out with them. Then again I didn’t really have my first relationship until I was 14, so maybe up until then, I just thought I was a little too young.
I’ve always loved the idea of “love;" Not the platonic or familiar kind, but the romantic kind. I grew up watching romantic comedies. We all know what it is. The media portrays romance like it’s this big, grand competition of who can outdo who. It’s a series of cute events with some conflict to throw some kind of realism into an otherwise perfect relationship. It’s crazy how much we fall for it. I, myself, am a huge fan of it all. I want something like that, and maybe that’s why all my relationships crashed and burned.
I saw what I saw on the TV. There were boys willing to drop whatever they were doing at the drop of a hat for a girl they barely knew. There were random coincidences that allowed the lovers to meet. There were petty arguments that were really just an excuse for the underlying sexual tension between the characters. I wanted the cute dates, the one liners, and the happy ending.
When I first started dating, I didn’t think much of it. I thought everything was going great until one day someone asked me a question. They asked me if I loved the person I was with at the time, and I said I did. Then they asked me if I was in love with him. That was the first time I actually started to think about what love really was, and that’s when I looked to the movies I grew up with, being sure that’s what being in love was like. I acted like the girls in the movies. It was my little way of singling out who I should be with and who I shouldn’t. If my partner at the time wasn’t playing along, I didn’t think it was it. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know I had a game in my head. They didn’t know I held them up to the standard of what I saw, so when I started to distance myself, I could see why they were confused or upset.
Back then, I didn’t fully realize my problem was because I couldn’t separate fiction from reality. The movies, books, and TV shows don’t serve as a complete representation of a relationship, and we shouldn’t see it as such. Now that I’m older I can see where to draw the line. It’s not always about the constant barrage of playful jokes, the overdone drama, or the gestures of romance that keep a relationship going. Sure, those things exist in real life, but there’s a difference between real life and the media. The media, both digital and print, are meant to exaggerate and make things bigger than life, and we as human beings want to aim for something more than ourselves. It’s fine to want those things, but the moment we try to apply it to our everyday lives and use it as excuse for why a relationship doesn’t work out, it’s wrong. Fantasy doesn’t amount to what’s really here, and if you keep reaching for it, you may miss out on what’s in front of you.
