Whether it’s making the grand gesture or the daily grind of enduring love – romantic comedies always have a way of pointing out some essential truth
Everything I know about love I’ve learned watching romcoms backwards. Running away from airports, closing the window on a boy busking in the rain, a woman putting her hair up and her glasses on – these are the lessons I have realised a person needs, lessons in listening to someone when they tell you they’re choosing another life, lessons in boundaries, lessons in comfort and the lies of femininity.
A video went viral last week – a man holding up Love Actually-style inspirational signs to his wife, who was very extremely in labour. He’s always been her “biggest fan” the signs say, and their relationship full of “prayer and patience” and although there have been “rough times” and a lost pregnancy, there’s no test that they can’t overcome together. The feelings you get as you watch the video are shockingly similar to actual labour pains – the same combination of aching horror and existential fear. And it highlighted the danger of another romcom trope, the grand gesture, which turns all focus on to the gesturer, turning the gesturee into an interchangeable object, an audience to their own life.
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