How Hollywood Gets Dr. Randy Gunter’s Love Wrong
You may have seen quite a few predictable storylines:
Boy meets girl. The boy sweeps the girl off her feet (hesitant at first sometimes). The two have a bit of a drool before falling madly in love and walking off into the sunset, living happily ever after.
What’s this new secret:
A man and a woman are brought together by difficult circumstances – war, possibly illness. These two overcome two formidable obstacles that threaten to separate them from each other. By the end of the movie, the two go off into the sunset, living happily ever after.
Although short, these two scenarios illustrate how the movies have taught us to believe that Happily Ever After is an end point, not a beginning.
They picture romantic love as a kind of super glue that, once in place, guarantees happily ever after.
However, in my forty years of counseling couples, I have encountered many intimate partners where they were trying to hold on to feelings of love that seemed to be fading away.
What happened to their happily ever after?
Why do movies prepare us for false expectations?
The enduring, unchanging idea of love that we learn from movies, novels, and poetry is the exact opposite of what makes true love last.
In fact, it is precisely this kind of expectation that results in much of the relationship dissatisfaction that couples experience today.
“Romantic” love means that two people will love each other forever and the relationship they feel will always be as strong and passionate as it was when they first fell in love.
This means that once your search is over and you find Find, you’ve got everything figured out.
But for this to be true, it requires that the people in the relationship never change or grow. Both of them will still be stuck at whatever level of personal development they were at when they met.
There will be nothing new or exciting to report. Their love will freeze in time.
As it has become clear, this is the stuff of fantasy.
People change. Feelings change. Dreams change. Life itself changes. Unforeseen circumstances bring unexpected experiences.
And believing otherwise is what creates problems for us later.
The real root of the problem
When we have an idealized vision of romantic love, we are not prepared for the inevitable challenges and changes that life brings – from mundane matters like moving to a new home to major events like illness, raising children, and problems with your extended family.
And when these things happen, we panic and resist. We long for what we once had. We are disappointed by our partners. We blame them and think they have changed, or we blame ourselves. We’re rethinking whether we’re in the right relationship at all.
But the truth is, we simply haven’t set things up right from the start, nor are we doing the things that bring back the magic and sense of discovery that was there at the start of the relationship.
The initial lust may fade, but the celebration of exhilaration can be constant.
When you enter a relationship knowing that it is normal for romantic love to change, you can use this phase of the relationship to prepare yourself for lasting love.
Moreover, you can continue to enjoy the excitement of romantic love in your entire relationship. Why?
Because when you and your partner understand how romantic love truly unfolds and find ways to strengthen your relationship through all stages of your relationship, tremendous intimacy is possible.
Turn romantic love into long-term intimacy
When couples achieve true intimacy, they know how to recapture their initial romantic feelings, but are deeply rooted in the heart-sharing history they’ve created over time.
They are able to take all the discovery, spontaneity, and unlimited possibilities of courtship days… and inject it into their relationship so that they keep the excitement going as they grow together as a couple and develop as individuals. The result is sweeter and deeper than what they felt as a new couple.
