Lies and Love

I love a good chick flick. Your typical boy meets girl, girl falls in love with guy, girl finds out guy was lying to her, girl gets offended and won't speak to guy, girl forgives guy, girl and guy get married or begin serious relationship.

This is essentially the plot of most of my favorite chick flicks: 1) You've Got Mail- check- "Joe, just call me Joe? Like one of those 22-year-old cocktail waitresses. Hi, I'm Cindy...", 2) 27 Dresses- check- "You said your name was Kevin.", 3) She's the Man- check- ok, so in this one the girl does the lying, but She is the Man. I'm still trying to decide if Dan in Real Life (my second favorite movie, after You've Got Mail) fits the pattern. It's a little different. The girl lies to her boyfriend, the brother lies to the boyfriend, and then girl dumps boyfriend and marries brother (boyfriend's brother, not girl's brother). Close enough for an independent film that's not quite a chick flick.

This realization got me thinking. Is there something wrong with the message of all these love stories? Should society really advocate trusting someone who lies to you? After some serious reflection (pondering on the metro), I think this pattern is pretty true to life. When we meet people, any people, not just dating people, we try to be our best selves. We generally try not to fart, burp, say mean things, eat too much, yell at other drivers, jaywalk, etc. because we aren't quite sure how the other person will react and we want to be liked. Then time goes on, and we get more comfortable. More of the good and the bad and the indifferent of our personalities comes out; in essence, more of us comes out. Few of us wake up thinking, "I want to be truly diabolical today, but I'm going to contain myself because I want X to fall in love with me." In fact, I think most of us wake up and say, "I'm going to give it another shot today because I'm trying to be good."

Another reason we conceal ourselves is to avoid being misinterpreted. Weird, huh? We act less like our true selves because we don't want people to think we are something we aren't. Joe Fox didn't want Kathleen Kelly to know he was the Joe Fox because he really just wanted to be known as a guy who took his very young aunt and brother to storytime. Joe knew that Kathleen would never talk to him at all if she knew who he was and what he did for a living, but he still wanted a chance to be a normal person. Kevin/Malcolm Doyle didn't want to be known as the guy who writes the weddings column in the New York Journal. He was just an average guy helping a girl who got knocked out at a wedding. This all makes sense. We are more than our professions or our last names. While those things are important to who we are, each individual is made up of little quirks and oddities that make us interesting, fun, and attractive. Sometimes stereotypes overshadow who we really are and what we really care about.

Also, getting to know a person takes time. Because we stereotype and because we all want other people to be a certain way, we sometimes exaggerate good qualities, pretend someone is something they aren't, or create fictional people in our head. When we find out the real person isn't the fiction we created, can we really be upset that the person wasn't who we thought they were? Not really.

I don't advocate lying in relationships or ever, but rationing information is bound to happen. This isn't always a bad thing, and movies aren't so far from the truth.

Disclaimer: This post is motivated entirely 100% by thoughts about chick flicks. I have a strict policy against posting anything personal about dating. More than anything, this topic was on my mind because I haven't seen a good chick flick in over a month and a half and have been thinking about which one to watch and when. :)