‘I Believe That One & One Make Two’

I sat through about a half-dozen previews tonight when I went to see the “Twilight Zone”-level creepy “Gone Girl.” Because I think “Gone Girl” is sort of a date movie (it has a couple in it so, naturally, couples will go see it, I believe marketers must be thinking), half the previews were for “date movies” – “Best of Me,” a Nicholas Sparks movie, “50 Shades of Grey,” which a woman in the theater actually applauded, and “The Theory of Everything,” a biopic about the relationship between Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane.

I will only ever see one of those movies.

Maybe I’m a snob. Maybe I’m cold. Maybe I’m heartless. Maybe I’m uptight. Maybe I’m a lot of things. Whatever the reasons, so many of these love stories, romances, date movies, etc. don’t seem loving or romantic to me in the least. Instead, I find a lot of these movies to be silly, irritating, even offensive.

As much as I adore Cameron Crowe, I feel he did the world a huge disservice with the line, “You complete me,” from “Jerry Maguire.” No, you don’t. No one does. At least, I don’t believe they do, which is why I’m the worst audience for a Nicholas Sparks movie where an intelligent, capable, determined adult woman’s life is worthless because she didn’t end up with her high school boyfriend.

What the heck?

I’m over the crumbling woman. I’m over the hot mess. I’m over Olivia Pope’s lower lip trembling whenever she’s within 5 miles of the president because she’s a successful, intelligent, powerful woman and she shouldn’t turn to jelly over some guy, especially one who’s completely terrible, by the way.

That’s not sexy. Neither is a promising, intelligent young woman completely turning over control of her life to some guy who’s going to help her “discover herself” in all manner of twisted ways. Please, don’t applaud that.

I’m not a Nicholas Sparks person. I’m not a Christian Grey person. I’m not a Fitz person.

So what am I?

I'm Leslie and Ben. Lorelei and Luke. Lily and Marshall. Jane and Brad.

I believe being in a relationship is an equal partnership. I believe you should like the person you’re with as much as you love them. I believe you can only be good for someone else if you’re good for yourself first. I believe love is about having someone’s back, being their biggest cheerleader, their most-ardent defender, their most-honest critic. It’s about wanting your partner to be their best self and supporting them on that journey. It’s about the bad times making you stronger. It’s about being with someone who doesn’t make your life but makes your life better.

I don’t see that often enough in movies or on TV. Instead it’s incomplete people looking to be made whole. Instead it’s couples endlessly sniping at each other. Instead it’s grand gestures that mean very little. Instead many of these “love stories” don’t look like love to me at all.