Recently I went to see a movie titled "Girls Trip" starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Tiffany Haddish. The movie (without giving it away) is essentially about four close girlfriends who drifted apart over time and decided to reunite for a fun girls trip to New Orleans. I thought the movie was HILARIOUS and I actually saw it twice! This post is not about a review of the movie rather a concept that I've seen time and time again when it comes to movies like this. Now when I say "movies like this" I mean romance movies and romantic comedies. Girls Trip is not a romantic comedy per se BUT there was a small focus on romance.
In general though, with movies in this category, the story line goes the same way almost every time. A woman is unhappy in a bad relationship and while she contemplates whether to stay or to go the perfect guy is just there...waiting on her to choose him. After a sudden epiphany, the woman ends things with the "bad guy" and she immediately starts a new relationship with the "good guy" and they live happily ever after (happy sigh). Not every romantic movie follows this storyline BUT a lot of them do. In essence, the movies who do portray this storyline give women a false reality of how to prepare for the right relationship. It's very rare that I've seen movies where a woman decides to end a bad relationship and then takes time to be alone to recover and be healed from what she exited out of. Typically it's only AFTER she gets into this new happy relationship that she begins to work on herself and turn her life around:
I've seen both of the above rom-coms (romantic comedies) and they both follow the storyline I described above in creatively different ways. In both of these films unhappy women quickly find themselves in new loving relationships after being by themselves for about five minutes (lol) and that's just not the way things go in the real world. I guess that's why movies like these are made because maybe the truth of how things really go with relationships is just too hard or depressing to deal with and people just want to see how things would go in a perfect world. I don't think that there's anything wrong with getting a break from the reality that we have to live and endure every single day. Hobbies, vacations, and storytelling help us to break away even if it's just for a few hours.
Here's the thing though...sometimes we as women unconsciously expect life to be like the movies. We expect that the men that we meet will sweep us off our feet with the most romantic words and gestures. We expect to run into the perfect guy right before we break up with the problem guy. We expect there to be no gap in time when leaving one relationship and entering into another. We expect all endings to be happy and everything to just...work out. Well, I'm here to tell you...LIFE ISN'T A MOVIE. Now don't get me wrong, movies are a unique art form, they capture and illustrate ideas of the mind in ways that are magical. The issue here is not movie story lines...not at all. The issue is having illogical expectations based on a story...because that's all movies are...visual stories.
The reality is that the perfect guy isn't waiting around for you to decide who you want to be with. There is no such person as the perfect guy. So when ending a negative relationship, it will be up to you to take the time that you need to get yourself ALL THE WAY together before entering into a new relationship. A lot of times relationships fail because people don't take the time to heal from a previous negative relationship. The journey to becoming whole before entering into a new relationship isn't often shown in movies and I think this is because it would make the movie way too long haha. It's easier to just show the problem and the promise while leaving most, if not all, of the process out of the script. I think that's what we do sometimes, we skip out on the process and try to go straight to the promise in our own way and then we get upset when things don't work out like it did in the movies. I remember when this movie came out:
"Two Can Play That Game" is about a intelligent, driven, strong woman who tries to control her relationship with a specific set of rules to punish her partner for making a mistake. I know I wasn't the only woman to write these rules down and try to implement them in real life! Needless to say these rules didn't produce the heartfelt happy ending as it did for Shante (played by Vivica Fox) in this film.
I find that certain movies help to validate my experience as a single woman and that makes me feel good because it means that someone else has had these experiences too. Meagan Good-Franklin directed and produced a great movie called "Love by the 10th Date" and this movie reflected various aspects of the struggles of being in relationships or just trying to get one to start:
I want to you to study these scriptures:
"The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,
and desperately wicked.
Who really knows how bad it is?"
~Jeremiah 17: 9 (NLT)
"Guard your heart above all else,
for it determines the course of your life."
~Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)
When the bible talks about the heart, it's not talking about the organ that pumps blood throughout our bodies. The heart in a biblical context is referring to your emotions, intellect, feelings, and spirit. The reason why I'm talking about your heart is because if you're not in control of your heart you will be deceived by your own thoughts and emotions making you believe that something is true when in reality...it's not. The heart is a source knowledge, feeling/emotion, and volitional activity. Always make sure to pray about your heart so that you can enjoy life for what it is and not what you think it should be based on what you saw in a movie.
Ladies look, there's NOTHING WRONG with seeing a movie that makes you feel good by giving you a mental vacation. The best movies are the ones that help you to laugh when the reality of life makes you want to cry (or kill somebody lol). When watching romantic movies always keep your thoughts and feelings in check! Don't walk into the world thinking that the movie is still on play.
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