On a day like today it is difficult to avoid the topic "love." If you are in a relationship you will be happy to be able to celebrate this date with your respective other. If you are single (and would like not to be) you will either take this holiday as an opportunity to go on a date to find someone to be in a relationship with or you will spend the day trying to ignore the holiday and the fact that you are alone and miserable.
It is hard to find someone to spend the rest our your life with (or at least part of it). And the expectations we have on love and relationships are one of the problems here. We build our expectations watching TV or movies and listening to fairy tales. Our role models for relationship are not our parents or grandparents. Its Chandler and Monica, Lorelai and Luke, Joey and Pacey, Susan and Mike, Lilly and Marshall, Penny and Leonard.
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We watch their love lives develop on screen. Love at first sight, friends turning into lovers, realizing that it is more than just friendship. We see how magical proposals are (I cry every time I see Chandler proposing to Monica). Romantic declarations of love. How beautiful and extravagant weddings can be. And how exciting and romantic everyday life can be with the one you love. But is this what real life is??
The answer is NO.
I did my bachelors in communication studies and there is a theory in the field of media effect research called Cultivation Theory. It was firstly developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross and its main statement is that "the more time people spend "living" in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television."
What effect media has on our perception of real life is evident for example in how distorted our view of the work life is. With series like Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, E.R., Extreme Makeover, Hart of Dixi, House and and Nip/Tuck how many people do you think work with medicine? And with series like C.S.I., Criminal Minds, Law & Order, Monk, Numb3rs and Without A Trace how many people do you think work in law enforcement? How many serial killers do you think are caught every year?
Let me give you a hint: the number you thought of is not even close to reality. A research done at the University of Münster showed how the distorted overrepresentation of some jobs on screen is influencing the career choice of young adults. Professions that are underrepresented on television are having difficulty to find new recruits.
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Under 1% of the US population worked as a policeman
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Media also has an effect on our love expectations. We see so many declarations of love, so many happy couples, beautiful and extravagant weddings on screen that we become unsatisfied with our own love life. What we want are proposals with a thousand yellow daisies, Weddings at the Plaza with 500 guests and a life with the one you love with not a single day of boring everyday life. We want a happy ending.
But life does not end at the happy ending. Everyday in a relationship is not like the networks show us on screen. Couples fight. You will not always find a common ground in an agreement. You will not have the same opinion on every matter (it would be boring if you did). Your loved one will not declare his love with big gestures every time he or she has the chance to. And this is OK!
If you want big gestures on a regular basis, have a life with no arguments or difference in opinion, to never fight you want to live in a dream world. In the dream world that TV and media let us to believe in.
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In my opinion it is because of these false expectations that the marriage rate is going down and the divorce rate is going up. In Europe the crude marriage rate went from 7.9 marriages per 1000 inhabitants in 1970 to 4.4 in 2010. The crude divorce rate on the other had went from 1.0 to 1.9 divorces per 1000 inhabitants.
With false expectations many couples give up instead of fighting for the relationship. They encounter some difficulty or something that does not correspond to what they see on screen and decide to look for another prince charming. With divorce becoming socially acceptable not even a marital status will make couples work harder on a relationship. If they are not happy with each other they sign the divorce papers and go look for wife number 3 or husband number 4.
But do not let this rant about false expectations misguide you. I am in a happy relationship and have been for 5 years. We had some hard times, fought and argued and have several topics that we should rather not talk about. How we made it through 5 years? Instead of giving up when we encountered some difficult path we worked through it, talked, tried to understand what was going on, resolved the problem and sometimes agreed to disagree.
Having watched a lot of series and movies there are things that I still dream of: a magical proposal some day, big gestures from him to show me how much he loves me, a beautiful wedding I have been planning in my head since I was lithe (like many other girls have). But my role models are not Chandler and Monica and all the rest. My role models are my parents, who will celebrate their 34th Anniversary this year, and my grandparents who have been married for almost 60 years. They have showed me that what is important in a relationship are not big gestures, single moments in iife, but to live together, be there for each other, help each other out.
When you look for love you do not look for someone to get married to in a expensive white dress. You look for someone to come home to every night. Someone to build a life with. Someone who will help you find your way and support you in your decisions (even if they do not completely agree to it).
So, in conclusion, you can say that this rant is about how false expectations from the screen can ruin someones chance at finding happiness. It is also a little bit about how thanks to commerce we think we have to express our love for someone on a exact date. I do not want flowers every valentine's day. I want flowers when my boyfriend feels like giving me flowers. Gestures and declarations of love should not be restricted to one day in the calendar. They should be spread out throughout the year.
