So, ALMOST-funny story....
Actually - "funny" isn't the right word. Ironic? How about that - an ironic story.
Went to see "Blue Valentine" on Friday evening. Don't want to toss out too many spoilers, so I'll just say that it was EXCEPTIONALLY conversation-provoking and would be especially poignant for couples to watch together. There was plenty about the characters that I identified with, having lived through the decay of a relationship awhile back that felt in many ways quite similar to the one decaying onscreen. There were points at which I wanted to tell the Michelle Williams character to see the red flags ("Don't marry the guy! You'll resent each other before you know it!) then points at which I wanted to tell the Ryan Gosling character to cut his losses and walk away ("Dude. She's not worth the pain no matter how much you love her....."). It made me wish I could reach through the screen and counsel them - er, honestly, to hand them a copy of "The Five Love Languages" and force them to face the expectation gap in their little love story - differences between what she expected of him and what he was prepared to give her - differences between their ideas about whether or not love should conquer all or whether they should have to work at fixing things. Differences about affection, about work ethic, about how early in the morning he starts drinking....lots of conflicting expectations....
So, we watch their relationship flounder over the course of the movie, which cuts back and forth chronologically between the falling-in-love and the falling-apart aspects of their story, and finally culminates in a wedding moment posited alongside the "I think we're over" moment that made both all the more powerful.
My mom and I both left the theater feeling like we wanted to rush back to our gentlemen and snuggle up to them and let them know how much we appreciated what was GOOD about our relationships. Nothing like watching lovers crash and burn to make you grateful for stability. Trouble is, when we're on an emotional movie high, it's tough to explain exactly why we come home clingy....
Either way - the best I could do when I got back to Mr Wonderful that evening was explain that it was a really terrific movie, and that I loved him a lot.
And, apparently, SIGH heavily when he asked me for a back rub that night.
Gee - nothing says "I love you and appreciate you and am glad to be with you!" like acting put out when he asks for some affection. Wish I realized this at the time.....we've both established that physical touch is a CRITICALLY important expression of love for both of us - so being told, "Fine, if I HAVE to," via my reluctance was pretty much tantamount to saying, "No, I won't love you, and your request to be loved is an imposition upon me."
Ouch.
And right on the heels of my movie-watching indignation about the characters' arrogantly poor communication and patent lack of willingness to see their situation from the others' perspective.
Joke's on me for falling prey to the same arrogance - the bonus, in this case, is that Mr Wonderful is a fantastic communicator and is committed to talking about things when they come up - when he feels a rift between us, when he feels under-appreciated, when he feels unloved - so rather than just turning bitter and resentful on me, we talk about it.
Er, sure, truth-be-told I'm always caught off guard whenever he honestly admits to feeling unloved - I get indignant - "HOW can you feel that way?!?!?!? I DO love you - and since I love you, how could that ever be misinterpreted????? OBVIOUSLY I love you - I'm not DELIBERATELY trying to make you feel bad - how dare your feelings be hurt?" And - yikes - I get defensive and accusatory and the whole thing becomes unnecessarily messy - my age-old "fight or flight" mechanism kicks in - I always default to "flight." I was trained that way. Taught (whether directly or accidentally) by dad that you don't bring it all to the table when you're emotional, you back off, re-group, re-evaluate, cool down, then come back when you're ready to talk like a calm, normal person. HOWEVER, on the receiving end, Mr Wonderful is left with this: "I say I'm feeling unloved and like there's distance between us and you want to LEAVE on me?"
It's ugly.
And invariably I end up busting out the big alligator tears, feeling threatened and accused and surprised and feeling confused that it's even possible when I love him wholeheartedly to ever slide off track and leave him feeling otherwise. Alas.....it happens.
Also - sorry, Mr Wonderful, for the probably unnecessarily personal glimpse into Us, but it seemed relevant.....OR, it was fitting timing that on the heels of being convicted about the delicate, precious nature of love, I can be as callous as a movie character any day.
SO - Blue Valentine.
This was one of those films that forces you to evaluate your own relationships and to hope against hope that you're not so arrogant OR so comfortable with the state of things that you completely mistake your comfort for healthiness or assume that because your needs are met, that the other person's are as well.
It reminded me that it's a good idea to do a "love-check" every now and then - to take each others' temperature and make sure both people's needs are being tended - because - as in this movie, it's all too easy to let time pass, wake up one morning and discover we resent the other person for not fulfilling us (when the reason they're not fulfilling us is because they're feeling neglected themselves), and we expect that the things that make us feel healthy and loved are the same things that make our partner feel healthy and loved. Guess what: they're usually not.
And just because a love affair BEGAN effortlessly and desires seemed perfectly aligned and everyone was thoroughly, blissfully happy from the outset doesn't mean it can CONTINUE effortlessly, and to mistake the ease with which we fell in love for the ease with which that love will be maintained and strengthened would be, um....a grievous error.
But we make that error all the time........
ALSO - there was a line toward the beginning of the film that I've been pondering for several days. The Ryan Gosling character says, while philosophizing about romance with some work buddies:
"I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we're resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I'd be an idiot if I didn't marry this girl she's so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option... 'Oh he's got a good job.' I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who's got a good job and is gonna stick around."
Something about the way he delivered this just made it sound SO true......I had to wonder whether or not men and women really DO approach marriage this way.....I guess I've probably bumped into my fair share of both who seem to fit this stereotype. But while I can't speak for men who've met the girl who changes their minds about forever after-hood, I think I can provide an explanation for the "Oh, he's got a good job" line.
Our Prince Charming changes.
When we're 18, our idea of the Perfect Man is this sort of James Bond meets Eddie Vedder meets Mr Darcy meets Indiana Jones meets Mr Big meets Paul Rudd in Clueless amalgamation who will hold our purse in the mall and write amazing love songs about us and save us from every threat of danger, be the envy of our friends and our swashbuckling soul mate and look good in a suit, in a cowboy hat, in a flannel shirt, or in nothing at all. We don't much care what he does for work or about his relationship with his family, or whether he prefers cats or dogs, boxers or briefs, wine or beer, well done or medium rare, toilet seat up or down, kids or pets, beaches or ski slopes, Adam Sandler or Eddie Izzard -- whatever. We're looking for a caricature.
And then we grow up a little.
And Price Charming becomes the guy who will be a compassionate father. The guy who will be a dependable partner. The guy who gets along well with your dad and your grandmother and your cat. The guy who makes a great companion. The guy who also really knows how to kiss. So, yeah, the guy with the good job who is gonna stick around. And that's not saying we're settling or that we give up on romance, just that we're realistic about what we want for the future.....and realistic about the fact that sustaining romance means finding someone we can feel safe with....
Either way - interesting to hear a character in a movie take the "in defense of men as hopeless romantics" stance......because I think I do understand what he's saying in the male regard - you spend your first several decades ambivalent, and then meet someone about whom it's not possible to feel ambivalent and decide you don't want to lose that girl or that feeling, so you better lock that down before....uh, before she changes her mind, maybe? Finds "something better?" I mean, sure that attitude bothers me because it assumes that women are fickle and constantly trolling for a better offer (not true! not true!), but fear and love do tend to, unfortunately, go hand in hand, so stands to reason there's a certain amount of trepidation that having found a girl worth keeping means that she won't want to be kept......
I could probably ramble on dating theory for pages, however - so I'll just cut this short and say:
GO SEE BLUE VALENTINE.
And then come back shoot me some comments about whether or not you agree - are men more hopelessly romantic?
OH, and I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't reference the quickly infamous, much-discussed scene that nearly netted the movie an NC-17 rating? The oral scene. My take: meh. It was definitely more explicit than its Black Swan counterpart, but, I thought, less disturbing or...uncomfortably graphic than a scene between the older version of the characters where wife deigns to have bathroom-floor sex with husband in the most pathetic, pitying sort of way, that, since they're both drunk, leads to utterly, convincingly uncomfortable moments of hurt feelings and threats of violence and all-too-realistic tension between the two when the husband wants his wife to want him, and she just wants to get him out of her way.......that was more difficult to watch than a happy girl with her pants down. Just my take. The greater shock came from context.
So there you have it.
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