Role Play: How Fiction Spoils My Real Life Relationships
I have an addiction. I am an excessive daydreamer, a fantasy factory wedged between real and fabricated. I am the star of my own melodrama, with every emotionally saturated scene accompanied by Coldplay’s “Fix You.” I am content’s bratty offspring, like if The Bachelor and Ethan Frome had a baby.
Fantasies add an element of delusion to real life, and all people have them. But I am going to assert, right here, right now, that I am not completely at fault. As a woman, content has conditioned me to expect a fantastical reality — and it’s a tough habit to break.
Over the past ten years, I have been in three serious relationships with three wildly different people. While dramatically pining over my handful of failed conquests, I searched longingly for a common denominator. It became sadly and glaringly clear: in each relationship, I projected my unrealistic expectations, based on manufactured love stories, onto real people.
Ever since I was able to digest the messages relayed in movies, television shows and books, I have been trained to find, target and acquire the perfect man. It’s as if love is presented as a solution and characters provide the recipe. I digest what I see, hear and read so completely that I subconsciously mimic it in real life. By doing this, I become (as nauseating as it is to admit) the damsel in distress.
As children, we’re presented with various notions of “true love,” ranging anywhere from the Disney kind to The Scarlet Letter kind. In too many instances, a woman must be saved by a man to find happiness. Think of any book, film or television show you watched while growing up — was any woman completely grounded and happy before she found love?
For perspective, let me dive into the characters and love stories that dominated my childhood.
Princess Jasmine, Aladdin: Status, royalty and riches perpetually plagued Princess Jasmine. She was lonely, trapped behind castle walls with nothing but her dreams. When she finally worked up the courage to enter the real world it was quite obvious that she could not survive independently. She nearly had her hand chopped off at the market for stealing! It wasn’t until Aladdin saved her from her miserable existence that she was able to explore. What would Jasmine have done without Aladdin? Surely, she would have ended up as Jafar’s paraplegic wife.
Kate DeWitt Bukater, Titanic: When Kate DeWitt Bukater set sail on the Titanic to return to New York with her monstrous fiancé Caledon Hockley, it didn’t take long for her to fall for Jack Dawson, who was able to convince her that she was better than her circumstances. While recalling her past, old Rose says of Jack, “…He saved me in every way that a person can be saved…” If it weren’t for Jack, Rose would’ve killed herself. If it weren’t for Jack, Rose wouldn’t have left Cal for a better life. She saw no way out on her own.
Marissa Cooper, The O.C.: With a nasty booze problem and a loveless relationship, Marissa was in serious need of saving (according to the writers of this teen soap opera). Thank God bad boy Ryan Atwood moved into the Cohen residence next door. Marissa has terrible judgment, but Ryan was always there to set her straight. What would she have done without him? Surely, she would have overdosed in Tijuana or married Oliver Trask.
So, what have I learned as a developing youth? I am broken and helpless until a man decides to dig me out of the unfortunate hole I was born into.
For ten years, I mimicked my manufactured predecessors; I subconsciously played “broken victim” for so long that I never questioned if I actually needed fixing. By playing this role — one that often translates to dependency and desperation — I jeopardized my real life relationships.
I expected too much. I expected to be saved from a problem that never existed to begin with. I expected a hero out of a regular person. I demanded that someone else fix me just by existing. I fantasized excessively about being the victim, which is actually everything I am against as a feminist. I imagined a mystery man suddenly and dramatically entering my life, sweeping me off my feet and ridding me of life’s problems. I projected this fantasy onto others.
It is a struggle for me to recall a fictional example where dependency on men is not highlighted; the message is far too common. I resent these storylines that so deeply forged my notion of romantic relationships. For this, I am so glad that girls of today will have Frozen to remember.
Acknowledgement is the first step to recovery. I know that I no longer need to be saved. I never did, I never have and I never will. No matter how bad things get, a mystery man won’t fix it for me unless I fix it myself. I’m not Jasmine, Rose or Marissa. I’m not weak. Plus, my reality is fucking great and it doesn’t need fixing. The next guy will only complement it.
