I spent most of the afternoon organizing my Google Reader, trying to figure out what I'd like to read every day versus crap that just crosses my desk. I considered cleaning up my del.icio.us too but that seemed pointless because I rarely reference it. Basically I'm trying to streamline my Internet time heading into 2009. Hours and hours spent online would better be used writing, or at least, reading. I've found that being back home, sitting in my preferred chair, enables me to not budge for five or six hours at a time. While my little desk at George's house was nice, it wasn't quite as comfortable as my setup here. It's been two days and I'm already back to my standard San Diego routine. Up at two, sleep at dawn, accomplish nothing. Yup, I'm definitely home.
So Leslie sent me an interesting article today about how watching rom-coms (romantic comedies) can spoil your love life. Fascinating that they do studies on this sort of thing. I should have gone into social anthropology or something, I could design these types of experiments all day.
It's hard to argue that these movies don't create unrealistic expectations for your real life but the article doesn't go into enoough depth anywhere to back it up with solid evidence. I mean, one of the parts of the study they mentioned was having students watch Serendipity versus a David Lynch movie. Of course the students watching John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale were more likely to believe in fate. Shit, it's fucking John Cusack/Lloyd Dobler! Plus the only thing people usually feel after watching a Lynch film is confused, and not just about love.
A quote from one of the researchers: "Films do capture the excitement of new relationships but they also wrongly suggest that trust and committed love exist from the moment people meet, whereas these are qualities that normally take years to develop." What I take from this is that movies can give us this idea that amazing relationships can spring forth from a singular, instantaneous, moment of chemistry. If that's what they're arguing, that movies have fucked with our perceptions of the beginning and end of relationships (from magical circumstance to happily ever after), I wholeheartedly agree.
I'm a victim.
I mean, I've long treasured my Before Sunrise moments and have almost consciously made that part of my relationship (and friendship) pattern. But maybe there is something to the idea that trust and commitment can't be built off one weekend's sparkle. I don't know though. I'd like to equate love to religion and if you want to trust and commit to someone, you just do it, damn the torpedoes. Faith as it's called. And it's so much more romantic that way, to fling yourself into the great beyond don't you think?
"I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times."
-Before Sunset-
Anyway, at the bottom of the article is a link to this new study these researchers are doing. It's called "The Media, Personality, and Well-Being Study." I guess they're looking for some link between your media consumption and your love life. Well, of course I'm gonna do that. Fifteen minutes later, I was still in the middle of the longest relationship questionnaire I've ever done. So many damn questions and all of them of the "strongly dis/agree" variety. And each one probably worthy of a good conversation.
So if you want to find out how you feel about romantic partners, try this thing out. It's like a relationship DDT with yourself. You don't have to sign up for the rest of the study either, or submit any information, despite the info page up front. Just take it so we can talk about it later. Here's some sample questions:
- I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me
- If your partner expresses disagreement with your ideas, s/he probably does not think highly of you
- I do not expect my partner to sense all my moods
- Sometimes romantic partners change their feelings about me for no apparent reason
- My desire to be very close sometimes scares people away
- I feel comfortable sharing my private thoughts and feelings with my partner
- Damages done early in a relationship probably cannot be reversed
- Misunderstandings between partners generally are due to inborn differences in psychological makeups of men and women
- One of the major causes of marital problems is that men and women have different emotional needs
- People who have a close relationship can sense each other's needs as if they could read each other's minds
