You might think twice before watching the latest romantic comedy — it could ruin your love life. Relationship experts at Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University found that romantic comedies give both partners in a relationship unrealistic expectations when it comes to romance.
In fact, the researchers found that film fans of "Runaway Bride" and "Notting Hill" didn’t communicate with their partners very well. Many believed that their partners should just know what they want without being told.
“Marriage counselors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you, then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it,” said Dr. Bjarne Holmes of Heriot-Watt’s Family and Personal Relationships Laboratory. “We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people’s minds.
“The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals that we realize.”
“Films do capture the excitement of new relationships, but they also wrongly suggest that trust and committed love exist from the moment people meet, whereas these are qualities that normally take years to develop,” said Kimberly Johnson, a Ph.D. student who worked with Holmes.
“We are not being killjoys — we are not saying that people shouldn’t watch these movies,” Holmes told the Daily Mail. “But we are saying that it would be helpful if people were more aware and more critical of the messages in these films.”
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