Save your relationship - avoid romantic comedies!

An Australian satirist tenders this advice to those wanting their relationships to last.

So-called feel-good films are making people feel sorry for themselves. There is no doubting the warm glow induced by the onscreen requiting of love, the stars and fates aligning and the little joke at the end followed by funny out-takes during the credits. However, this fades almost as soon as the lights go up and the viewer turns to the seat next to her.

If her man has a wet T-shirt, in all likelihood it is not because he has just emerged, muscles rippling, from a lake, but because he's been drooling on himself while snoozing for the past hour and a half.

. . .

In a poll of 1000 Australians, almost half said romantic comedies, or rom-coms, had adversely affected their expectations of relationships, Reuters reported last week. One in four said they were expected to know what their partner was thinking, while one in five believed their partners expected gifts and flowers "just because".

"Just because they're shallow, materialistic individuals who can only be happy when they are given stuff?" an expert suggested. Naturally, he asked not to be named.

An entirely different expert said happy endings were making us sad. "It seems our love of rom-coms is turning us into a nation of happy-ever-after addicts," said sex and relationships expert Gabrielle Morrissey. "Yet the warm and fuzzy feeling they provide can adversely influence our view of real relationships. Real relationships take work and true love requires more than fireworks."

So much for surprising the missus with a box of sparklers. Honestly, you can't win.

Historians say romantic love dates back to the Middle Ages, when knights began nobly expressing their adoration to ladies in the courts of Europe. The ladies would allow the most chivalrous knights to carry their "favour" or "token" in battle.

This came about after one lady handed a knight a hankie before a joust. She did so with the words, "Wash it yourself, you lazy bugger!" He spent the rest of the week writing poems and giving her posies of dandelions by way of apology and the rest is history.

Before you knew it, Ye Olde Favoure Shoppe was selling hankies galore and a hard-working peasant couldn't get a date without making up a couplet about the joys of ploughing the furrow and sunlight glinting on ripe watermelons.

. . .

Some people grow out of rom-coms. Julia Roberts, for example. The 42-year-old star of Pretty Woman and Notting Hill said last week she was giving up on the genre.

"I'm too old for those silly situations of unrequited love," the Press Association quoted her as saying.

It was "less plausible when you're in your 40s to be falling down in the hallway because a boy walks by".

When you're in your 40s you're more likely to fall down in hallways because a boy has left a skateboard lying around.

Lack of romance can become a source of great stress when couples become parents. You still get surprise parcels on your pillow but they tend to be encased in nappies [diapers] and still attached to a baby's rear end.

There's more at the link. Very funny, and highly recommended.



Peter