Column

The trouble with relationships is that people base them on what they see on television. Guys see beautiful women who are smart, funny, and have a few endearing flaws that don’t generally cause any major hang ups. Girls see handsome, successful, charismatic men who are sweet and set up elaborate and thoughtful surprises. They are the perfect couple and someday maybe someone just like that will come along for me. . .

But television is just for entertainment, we all know that right? We can tell the difference between TV and reality.

I think if we take a look at our culture we will find that we cannot accurately separate the two. What we see on our screen becomes what we act out in life. What we spend our time watching becomes what we spend our time thinking about, and what we think about becomes our worldview, and our worldview shapes our expectations. The characters we see on TV are beautiful, funny, sweet, thoughtful, and generally lacking in all but one major flaw that in the end, doesn’t seem to matter much.

We act like these characters are real and if we look long enough and hard enough we will come across our version of McDreamy. If only we don’t settle.

Now people shouldn’t settle for someone who won’t love them or make them a priority, but to toss a good relationship because it doesn’t seem like the fairy tale we thought it would be is selfish and somewhat sad. Life isn’t television. In life there is compromise and disappointment and lots more hard work and less heat than we see on the screen. We hold onto our dreams of the perfect relationship and miss the chances we get to make a relationship happen. The point is people need to relinquish their movie-shaped expectations and take a look around them. Their real life love story might be waiting.