Why? Let's face it, you would get arrested for romantic comedy behavior in real life. No one wants their wedding broken up and guys running around the city on horseback are just an accident waiting to happen. And advice from women is also dead on arrival - women give men advice like 'take a chance and talk to her' without telling men that the only people that women really want taking a chance look like George Clooney and have a Tuscan villa to match. In all other instances, wait for a sign and then proceed with caution. And that's downright generous compared to the advice women give to other women, like 'your new, short haircut looks really cute'. Secretly, they are cheering because that woman just removed herself from the dating pool.
Well, I am wrong in thinking those are the Big Two. A paper in Mass Communication and Society says its television doing the most damage. They may have a point. If guys think dating is a plot from "Two And A Half Men", well, Charlie Sheen is not all that adorable in real life. And don't even get me started on how "True Blood" can whack out the expectations of women. Sorry, we can't be mopey and broken after 200 years.
In the paper, 390 married couples participated in a survey which had questions about their satisfaction level with their romantic relationship, expectations, etc. and then how authentic they thought television portrayals of romantic relationships were and how often they watched shows that had romance.
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No surprise that the more a person 'believed' in television romantic portrayals, the greater their unhappiness with real life.
“In this study I found that people who believe the unrealistic portrayals on TV are actually less committed to their spouses and think their alternatives to their spouse are relatively attractive,” Dr. Jeremy Osborn said in a released statement, and reading a press release is really all of the analysis I did for this blog post. “We live in a society that perpetually immerses itself in media images from both TV and the web, but most people have no sense of the ways those images are impacting them. The rate of marriage failure in the U. S. is not dropping, and it is important for people to have a sense of what factors are leading to the failure of so many relationships.”
The more obvious solution is to spend less time watching television and more time going for her neck. That is one thing "True Blood" gets right. Just avoid puncturing the skin. There's romantic and then there is creepy.
Citation: Jeremy L. Osborn, 'When TV and Marriage Meet: A Social Exchange Analysis of the Impact of Television Viewing on Marital Satisfaction and Commitment', Mass Communication and Society Sept. 2012, pages 739-757, DOI:10.1080/15205436.2011.618900
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