We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the things TV and movies always get wrong about love and relationships. Here are the best responses.
1. That relationships are filled with constant over-the-top gestures of love and passion.
So often relationships in TV and movies are portrayed as being packed full of non-stop, over-the-top romantic moments where the people involved are utterly consumed with showing their love for each other. In real life, relationships are...quieter than that. Falling in love isn't a series of grand gestures, it's not all-consuming, it just happens while you're hanging out with someone.
— MrsH810
The best parts of relationships are the quiet moments — just hanging out watching TV or cooking and laughing together. Big, dramatic declarations of love and over-the-top gestures don't make a relationship.
2. And that ridiculously over-the-top arguments happen all the time too.
TV and movies suggest that there's always drama and over-the-top arguing in every relationship. I've been in a seven year relationship and not once have I had an argument even 1/8 of the seriousness that's shown on screen. I haven't stalked my boyfriend to make sure he is in fact going to work, I haven't hacked into his emails and I definitely haven't stormed out of a restaurant after an argument about ~where our relationship is going.~
3. That every person you fall in love with will love you back.
In practically every TV show or film I've watched, if the protagonist likes a person, that person always likes them back. There's a lot more unrequited love in real life, and it's not always possible for the person we love to love us back.
4. That you'll end up staying with your first love forever.
You don't always end up with your first love. One of my bigger pet peeves in shows and movies is that all the characters get together and stay with each other — the classic example is in Harry Potter. Sometimes new people come into our lives that we like better than the boys we had crushes on when we were 11.
5. That you should give up incredible opportunities for love.
I hate how people in TV and movies always give up incredible opportunities for love. Like Rachel giving up a great job in Friends, and Andy leaving a job which could have given her an incredible future for a boyfriend who was a bit of an idiot in The Devil Wears Prada. In real life, if someone loved you that much then they wouldn't expect you to give so much up.
6. That the "right woman" can change a "bad boy."
It's such a ridiculous cliché that the right girl can change the "bad boy." No. The bad boy will just end up wasting the girl's time and create a toxic relationship that'll probably haunt her for years.
— jacij3
7. That high-school teens spend their whole time having sex.
Teens are never as hot IRL as they are in TV and movies. The teen boys in my school have braces, wear ripped jeans and are insecure about their bodies. Same thing with girls. They don't have THAT amount of sex, either. Like in Riverdale, Archie and Veronica have sex no matter what's happened. Someone's dying? Let's have sex. There's a serial killer on the loose? Let's have sex. Your dad is about to die and you're running out of money? Let's have sex. This does NOT happen in real life.
8. That controlling or abusive behaviour is romantic.
Controlling, stalker-like and borderline abusive behaviour is somehow always idealised as romantic. For example, in Twilight Edward breaks into Bella's room and watches her sleeping, (creepy!) he follows and stalks her (super creepy!) and then controls her behaviour once they're together. It's not cool and definitely not romantic.
When a man stalks you, takes the engine from your car and/or stops you from seeing your friends, it's not romantic and it's not respectful. Abuse is not romantic, and love doesn't make abuse OK.
9. That cheating is fine if it means you can be with your ~soulmate.~
They pass off that cheating is OK if the other person in the relationship is a dick. For example, in Letters to Juliet, she's in a relationship the entire time but because her boyfriend isn't right for her and she's in love with the main character, it's portrayed as totally fine. Even if it is ~true love,~ cheating is never OK!
10. And that it's fine to break up a relationship.
It drives me insane how, if the male lead has a girlfriend when he meets the female protagonist, the girlfriend is always horrible, bitchy and dull. She's a throwaway character that you can't imagine the guy ever wanting to be with, so it doesn't matter when her heart gets broken and her life upended.
11. That women need a relationship to be happy.
The spinster cliché really annoys me. There'll be a 40 year-old woman, eating ice cream alone in her small apartment, desperately wishing a man would marry her. In real life, some women are happily single, believe me.
Every girl in every movie and TV show is absolutely obsessed with her boyfriend or obsessed with getting one. All the girls who have a boyfriend are portrayed as "having it all," and the girls who don't are branded as losers. Why do we need a significant other in order for people to accept us? It's dumb, and really, really degrading.
12. That staying in love is easy.
Falling in love is hard enough, but staying in love with someone through all of life's changes and obstacles is even harder — and I think that's what true, realistic love is all about. Growing old together is not that easy and takes real strength, because life doesn't have an end-of-a-movie scene where everyone sets off to live in a perfect world and have a perfect relationship.
— Woody98
13. That women will always fall for a man who secretly likes her.
The biggest lie for me is the whole "guy likes girl, girl doesn't know and is completely happy with her life, guy gets into a relationship, girl finds out guy likes her and ends up falling for him." Ross and Rachel and Niles and Daphne are good examples of something that rarely happens in real life.
14. That entire relationships can be compromised over a very simple misunderstanding.
There is always a small misunderstanding — usually a person seeing their partner with their arm around someone else, who normally turns out to be their sibling — and instead of just asking the person what's going on, they'll storm off and proclaim: "Oh my god, they're cheating on me!!" In the real world you'd just text them: "Whatcha doing? Saw you in town with someone" and they'd reply: "It was my sister." End of story.
There's always a guy talking about one thing and his potential significant other talking about another that then just leads to a mass of confusion and drama. In real life, people speak in full sentences and communicate.
15. That you won't care if a best friend sleeps with your ex.
Why does everyone always get over their best friend sleeping with their ex-girlfriend? It happens in every TV show and it always takes, like, three episodes for them to totally get over it. In real life, wouldn't you be devastated?
16. That women always end up falling for the guy who's right under their nose.
That the guy the girl isn't interested in for the entire movie ends up being the person she discovers she was in love with "the whole time." In real life you wouldn't suddenly just fall in love with someone you've never been interested in.
17. That men and women can't be ~just friends.~
It's always the case that the guy and girl who "don't really get along," "butt heads" and/or "spar verbally" are into each other, and it's annoying as hell! I have a guy friend and our relationship is kind of that of Han and Leia, except without the love. Everyone thinks we're into each other and it's really irritating. We're just friends who love to be mean to each other and who really don't get along sometimes. That doesn't mean we like each other! In movies, those friends who fight always fall in love. Not only is it not true, but it makes people think it is true, which makes people make assumptions when they see friends like that.
18. That it's cute to kiss someone to shut them up in the middle of an impassioned speech.
— Desiree Michelle Hartney, Facebook
19. That chasing someone to the airport or interrupting their wedding to profess feelings is a romantic gesture.
I loathe the trope of running to stop someone getting on a plane/get married. I feel like filmmakers shoehorn it in because "that's what happens in romantic movies." I hate so many things about it, not least that the person being run for immediately loses any agency they had by throwing over this huge decision and going with the indecisive asshole who left it until the last minute to profess their feelings.
— Alice Corrigan, Facebook
