My wife has recently been hooked on the Twilight series. She’s read the books and seen the first couple of films and is pestering me to go see the third film. So last night I had to sit through Twilight to get up to date before going to the cinema. And as I have a habit of doing, I was analysing why it is so popular and what my wife likes about it… apart from Robert Pattinson. It didn’t make me particularly popular with my wife. So if you really enjoyed the film then you might not want to read the rest of this, because it may ruin the romance of the storyline. But it might make your life happier.
I have to say from the outset, that as a deeply unromantic person, I hate this type of film for everything it stands for. I believe that the same reasons that make people love this film are responsible for most of the stress, relationship break-ups and unhappiness in the world and I would like to explain why.
Twilight is a classic romance, in the vein of Romeo and Juliet and so on. A romantic story requires the tension of desperately wanting someone, but circumstances preventing you from having them. In Romeo and Juliet, it was family differences that kept the lovers apart. In Twilight the lovers are kept apart by the vampire’s instinct to kill, yet his love for her.
Of course, our heroic lead is different, part of the one good vampire family who control their instinct to kill and limit it to animals. He is naturally drawn to Bella, in a way he’s never been drawn to anyone else, and fears he cannot control his desire for her and this will endanger her. So we have the set of circumstances which produce the tortured soul and ensure the tension that romance requires to exist.
The Problem of Romance
To me, it just seems madness. Life is really simple, but the stories we tell ourselves can make it seem horrendously complicated and tortured. That’s fine for fiction. But it bothers me because our experience of life is determined more by the stories that we make up about our lives, than by any actual facts. And so as people create these stories about their limitations in their relationships and in other areas of their lives, they suffer unnecessary pain.
They get into an abusive or dysfunctional relationship and believe that they are doomed to an unhappy love life because their Partner can’t love them in a healthy way. Or they pine for someone who no longer loves them or was only using them. Or they rue a lost opportunity and use it as the excuse for their unhappiness.
All stress is caused by the person suffering from stress interpreting that they are torn between opposing circumstances that cannot be changed. But just as Bella is not the only girl Edward could love, and neither is Edward the only boy for Bella, there are factors in our stressful situations that we interpret as being the only possible way things could be that aren’t.
The way we create stress is exactly the same way that our great romances are told. The straightforward route seems blocked off. So rather than take the highway to our goal, we have to take the great winding route through the hills and forests to get to the same goal.
photo credit: bradleygee
When you talk to someone who is depressed they will tell you of how hard they fight to be happy, yet something stops them being happy. They tell how much harder it is for them to be happy than for others. They tell a story not unlike a romance, of circumstances that holds them from a happier life.
A happy and functional relationship will never be a gripping romance. To just meet and happily go through the stages of a healthy relationship without obstacles would seem boring to die-hard romantics. Yet the desire for a great romance is the biggest obstacle to a happy and stable relationship. What’s really at the root of the great romances is much the same dynamic as the blind hope of winning the lottery or the zero to hero stories.
Romance Is A Desire Born In Desperation
When someone feels desperately poor and desperately wants more money, yet can see no realistic way of achieving it, in desperation they rely on blind luck. When someone desperately wants to love and feel loved, yet doesn’t feel anywhere close to realising that relationship they hope for some charming knight to sweep them off their feet. When someone feels undervalued and untalented they hope that they can, out of nowhere, get a shot at the title as in the film, Rocky.
Romance, whether that would be in the traditional relationship style or as a dreamer hoping for success, is a story that short-cuts and replaces the need for skill and dedication with chance. Romance is the story that tells people too dispirited or too lazy to work towards a goal how they can cheat the process. It is a solution to the problem of feeling too far from success and not believing you can get their own your own steam. I have spoken numerous times about the 10,000 hour rule to success, romance is the story that tells you that you can get there without practice or effort.
Romance says it’s out of your hands. You need to hope you bump into ‘The One’. If you get a lucky break and your Boss realises that you are just the person to save their company. People that believe this, build without stable foundations and when an ill wind blows, and sooner or later it does for us all, their deck of cards crashes to the floor dashing their hopes.
Our relationships are not determined by finding ‘The One’. They are determined by how we relate to our Partner. They are set by the willingness we have to understand, appreciate and accept him or her. In short we have no control into the circumstances of our birth. We may be given a silver spoon or we may be born into unimaginable suffering. But were we go from that start depends on the paths we choose. If we accept responsibility and work to become more skilled at the game of living life, then we will reach a higher quality of living. If we continue to dis-empower ourselves and blame others life will become a roller-coaster ride that we can’t seem to stop.
Some people do want the rollercoaster ride. They choose Partners who will bring them excitement because they do not have their own personal passion to excite their lives. So the ups and downs jolt them into feeling alive, much like a drug addict injecting their high. The problem comes when the drama needs more contrast to maintain the same excitement and the lows get too low to endure.
We Get What We Evolve To
In life, in relationships or other areas of our lives, we get pretty much what we settle for. We could get better if we demand more and are willing to step up a level in our ability to attract, choose and relate to our Partner. There is a statistical principle called regression to the mean that relates to the quality of our lives over time. What this means is that flukes can and do happen, but the longer we collect statistics for, the more they level out to match a true measure of our skill.
So if I played Tiger Woods at golf, maybe he might have a nightmare on the first hole and I might actually hit the ball properly for a change and by sheer luck win the hole. However as we played the rest of the course, luck would play a much smaller part than our natural skill levels. Over the entire game then, Tiger would make up for one nightmare hole and level out to closer to his average score. And I would screw up at enough holes to reach a more accurate average score.
Or in relationship terms, you might meet one scum bag who mistreats you, betrays you or otherwise makes it almost impossible to have a happy relationship, but if several of your relationships fit this pattern, then you need to look at what you can do differently to build a happier relationship.
You Can Direct Your Own Story
Romance depends on a belief in fatalism and destiny. A sense that the cards have been dealt. That there is little that you can do. That the circumstances are bigger than the individuals involved. The ‘want, but can’t have’ dilemma. This makes life seem like a roll of the dice. Maybe you get a good hand. Maybe you get a bad hand.
photo credit: Lucy Boynton
The truth is that we all get dropped into a set of circumstances and what we aspire to and believe is possible is set by those circumstances. But so also are the range of our expectations. It takes less, in terms of circumstances, to make a starving Pauper happy than a spoilt Prince. There is always a path to a happier life or a higher level of happiness. But that path is not one that is found by chance. It is one that is discovered and achieved.
Happiness, in relationships, as well as in life is determined by how you feel about you. Some people so lack faith and love for themselves that they desperately seek out anyone who will throw them a crumb of hope that they the other might see something they fear they do not have. Someone to make them feel special. Romance is a story where you get to feel better or more special than others. It’s much the same craving that causes all of us to try to outdo others or slant events in ways that make us seem superior. None of us are better or more special. We are all equally worthy. And that is enough.
Or it is when you truly feel it.
Romance Is About Validation, Love Is Living Fully
The real appeal of romance is the idea that someone falls so deeply in love with you that they cannot control their desire for you or live without you. It is the ultimate validation of your worth and specialness. In Twilight, Bella is so drawn to Edward and so willing to give herself, because quite frankly she had nothing to live for. In Edward she found an escape from bland meaninglessness.
If you truly love something in life, something beyond yourself, you have no need, or certainly much less need, for validation from others. Bella is drawn to Edward because she has found nothing in the world that appeals to her. She has no great hope or passion. She doesn’t quite feel that she fits in or belongs. And in seeing someone so very different she feels hope that she has found someone with whom she can fit in, outside of the normal world.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu
It is often said that before you can love another, you must love yourself. This is true, but it is somewhat a half truth.
I do not believe that you can fully love yourself without loving someone or some thing outside of yourself. To truly love is to transcend the level of self. It is for all petty thoughts to be outshone by the intensity of pure love.
Love gives meaning to our thoughts, actions and ultimately our being. We exist to somehow improve, protect or care, as an instrument, guardian or conduit of what we love.
In contrast romance takes the thoughts and actions of others to give meaning to our life. It says, others exist to somehow improve, protect or care for us. Romance is the ultimate self-aggrandisement.
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved
Mignon McLaughlin
It is essential that we love ourselves for a healthy relationship. If you really love yourself you do not need another to love you. It would be nice, but there is not the desperate need of the Romantic. Yet the need to be loved is what ruins many a relationship. For people who do not love themselves veer too far out of the bounds that any reasonable person could put up with for any lasting period of time. Either they have too little regard for themselves and accept any treatment by their Partner, which leads to contempt or frustration. Otherwise they are self-obsessed, overly needy, jealous, possessive or so on and make demands that any sane minded person will find intolerable to live with.
Someone who is a nightmare to live with, will only be able to make a relationship work with maybe 1 in a million people. Whereas someone who is calm, caring and fair will be able to get along happily with 1 in 50 people. So the odds are less of meeting ‘‘The One’’ than they are of meeting one who you could happily live with.
The Romance Myth
What a romantic story tells us though, is that the problem isn’t the insane and unreasonable treatment that you expect from your Lover. No, of course not. It’s the fact that you haven’t met ‘‘The One’’ that is the perfect match for you. So people go through relationship after relationship, blaming other people, their star signs, incompatibility and telling themselves that he/she wasn’t ‘The One’.
All relationships work on the same principle. Whether they are love or business relationships, friendships or alliances. They work when both sides benefit from their continuation. When it’s fair and equal. If one side always loses, time after time in business transactions, they would eventually go bust. If a friend keeps demanding from you and never repays or benefits you, the relationship will end. Bitterly.
We know this, yet when it comes to relationships, our romantic stories tell us that we should be adored and worshipped. Young girls are implicitly told that a charming Prince will sweep in, slay the dragon, and on first sight fall deeply in love and accommodate their every wish. Or in modern symbolism, Christiano Ronaldo will meet them in a Nightclub, marry them and live happily ever after in OK Magazine.
photo credit: markhillary
On what basis?
That this girl is so much more beautiful?
Or because through a glance he can see her true nature?
The story doesn’t really stack up. Emotions that develop quickly have shallow roots and can be quite easily uprooted. No one girl is that much more desirable than the next most attractive, that boredom or an argument, might convince the Prince to choose another. And that is why so many girls become anorexic. Or feel ugly and insecure. The problem didn’t start with the glossy magazines and their airbrushing. They just grew out of the cultural myths of our society.
Great romances are like spectacular weddings. They create lots of excitement and vivid memories. Because of their very intense nature they can only be maintained for very short bursts. And when the thrill has faded, if there isn’t a stable structure and foundation to sustain the marriage, the celebration will be for nothing.
To Live Without Romance Is To Take Control Of Your Life
The critical point is that you do have control over your life and your emotional well-being. You do have control over your relationships. Yes, there are unreasonable people out there, who may make it very difficult to have a happy relationship with, but there are many more reasonable ones. The craving for romance comes from the desperation of not knowing how to achieve what you want. You might not know how to get areas of your life working, but with effort, focus and determination you can find out and achieve happiness.
Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tzu
What really counts in making a happy life, isn’t the heart stopping thrills and roller coaster rides, but the small, consistent and boring details. It’s nice to be appreciated with flowers and surprise trips, but if they are compensations they are too little reward for too much pain down the line. Whatever you want, a relationship, career success or wealth the only reliable path to it comes from continuous and consistent progress towards it. It is about patience, not in the sense of waiting passively in blind hope, but patience in the sense of walking before you run.
Ultimately a happy life is one that you can continuously mould to your evolved tastes. Moulding life is about understanding that the outer world you experience reflects perfectly your inner maturity.
Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
Mignon McLaughlin
