I'm considering a breakup

May 31st, 2022

I thought it would be silly to start this entry by saying that the shows and movies we watch impact our emotional stability severely. But here I am, saying that the shows and movies we watch impact our emotional lives severely.

I used to think of myself as a down-to-earth kind of gal. In my childhood, I enjoyed being with the adults more than with the other kids. I watched a lot of movies with my mom and sister and it was clear I had an artistic vein.

I didn’t, however, understand the emotional impact of what I said to people. So I repeated the cliché, yet impactful words, carefully picked by experienced writers. The meaning of life imitates art was subconscious, but real nonetheless - as I mirrored my relationships with those I saw on the screen.

I told my mom I would be her neighbor when I grew up so I could always stay close to her. A promise she’ll forever hold against me - today, I live on another continent. I told my sister she should be a singer because she had a beautiful voice, right after she did a horrible Christina Aguilera impression. My sister was never one for the arts. And as for my dad, whom I never truly connected with, my actions were more important, not my speech.

In my teens I became emotional. More than I used to be, at least. I started watching movies and series and reading books that I had chosen myself. The content changed and the reality of life hit me hard in the face. I couldn’t quite differ fiction from reality and I expected my life to be a reflection of what I had been watching on the screens. I couldn’t recognize how scripts were trying so hard to manipulate my emotions.

Throughout the past couple of weeks, I saw with my own eyes the problem with this emotional manipulation. Later realizing that I had been a victim of this same poison as a teenager.

My boyfriend said he was considering breaking up with me. He sat me down on the couch and said we needed to talk. He said that our overly stable relationship made him feel old, and that he wasted his youth and now he needed to compensate for the lost time. That he was urging for that feeling of falling in love again - we’ve been together for three and a half years; and we live together.

I left that conversation and went straight to bed after he said ‘I’ll let you know what I decide’. I was devastated of course, for the whole day after, at work, feeling disposable, afraid the tears would break my keyboard and they would have to deduct it off my salary.

He came home at night and literally threw himself in my arms and apologized. We talked about what had happened. I cried again. He didn’t. He never cries when we’re discussing the problems in our relationship. I wonder if he cries when he’s by himself.

The matter is: my partner didn’t grow up watching TV at all. When I met him, he had never heard of the biggest TV shows and movies and celebrities of the past two to three decades.

He knew musicians from a different time period and just because that his true passion. But no current stars. He was not emotional and his ideal relationship was based on what he had seen growing up. Divorced parents and step parents who spend months apart from their partners. Not so heartwarming. But I must give him credit for having worked on this pseudo-issue for the past years. Though there’s still room for improvement.

In the beginning of our relationship, I was blinded. Head over heels. I was living my fantasy of the first romance. A serious, emotional and sexual commitment - which I really longed for throughout my teens. But at this point in my life, I have already realized that my dreams and expectations had been corrupted by what I saw on screens while growing up.

He, on the other hand, hadn’t even yet been poisoned. That is until we started watching a cheesy, cliché, though extremely relatable and cute show about two teens falling in love in high school.

I could see the poison in him now. The urge of feeling that feeling of falling in love. The irresponsible youth and the enormous importance of miniscule actions.

Two days after we finished the series, he sat me down on that couch and broke my heart.

- Ms. Rodwell