Heated Rivalry, 10 Things I Hate About You, 27 Dresses and, hell, even Glee. Besides being almost perfect works of media, what do these all have in common? They all show us the ups and downs of relationships. When you think about romance, or consume any form of media dedicated to it, you see the emotional rollercoaster ride that comes from being in a relationship. Most stories end with the couple together, overcoming their difficulties for the sake of their love. They show us heartbreak, but usually also a form of forgiveness. I’ve been told that’s not necessarily realistic – not that I would know. The romance we usually see is either happy, feel-good fluff or explosive drama-filled angst with exaggerated characters and situations, which isn’t representative of realistic relationships with boring days and disappointing endings.
I love a good rom-com as much as the next person (maybe more, if we’re being honest) and I get overly invested in fictional couples. Maybe it’s my lack of experience when it comes to relationships that makes me so excited when two (very fictional) people get into a (very fictional) relationship and makes me sad when they have a (very fictional) breakup. I live in a time where there's a new romcom every weekend and at an age where my friends are all getting in and out of relationships or situationships or hookup-ships or whatever the ever-growing lists of terms is.
On one hand, I resent my generation's obsession with love and sex. It feels like all anyone cares about or wants to talk about and it bores me. It just feels shallow and repetitive, as though we should be spending time on other things. On the other hand, I’m a bitter and petty person who is willing to admit I only care because I don’t have much to say. In situations like these, I cling to the same pathetic stories that have been told so many times that they don’t mean anything personal to me beyond being anecdotes I tell for the sake of feeling included.
Whilst I’ve come to terms with being single for as long as I have, that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what I’m missing out on. The experience and the feelings of someone loving you and choosing you are something I’ve only ever imagined in my head, over and over. In my head, I’ve been loved but never heartbroken. I’ve never had to experience the kind of pain that everyone talks about being the worst thing they’ve felt. The feeling and experience that has so many songs and movies written about it that everyone knows how much it sucks, even if you’ve never had it personally, like me. The weird part, though, is that it doesn’t make me scared of it or want to avoid it. It makes me want it more.
Obviously, I’m not saying that I want to be hurt, by no means. The funny part is that I have had my heart broken in other ways (friends, family) but never the classic way – never because of a failed romance. And truthfully, it’s not the same. I feel like there’s an important, pinnacle human experience that I’m missing out on. That I’m listening to my favorite songs or watching my favorite movies from an outsider perspective. I love them and I understand how important they are to people, but to me it’s just another form of entertainment that is almost as unrelatable to me as the serial killer horror movies I watch.
So I guess all of this is to say that at the root of it, no matter how fucked up it makes me seem, I want to be heartbroken. Because heartbreak – the romantic kind, that is – proves that at some point you were in a relationship with someone who loved you and chose you. Yes, that ended, which could've been a result of something as simple as falling out of love or bad timing or something as painful as cheating. But what matters is that it happened. One day you can look back on the heartbreak and the memories – good and bad – fondly or at the very least as something that helped you grow as a person, a partner and maybe even a friend.
Each time one of my friends has been heartbroken by their partner, they come out of it for the better. It gives them an opportunity to be better in future relationships and look for something better in future partners. I’ll be starting from scratch pretty much. When I get into my first relationship (though at this point it’s starting to feel more like an if than a when), I’ll be behind everyone else. I won’t have firsthand knowledge or experience for what I want, who I want to be with or how I want to be in the relationship. And, if I’m being honest, that scares me a little.
So the truth is, I wanna be heartbroken. I want to experience the joy and excitement, the love and beauty and fun of being in a relationship with someone I love and who loves me. I want to experience the pain and sadness, the horror and tragedy of being heartbroken. I want to experience the growth and the satisfaction of the aftermath, of being a newer and better person. I want that normal human experience.
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