ROMANTIC COMEDIES, TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

I never considered myself to be someone with an addictive personality. I’ve witnessed those close to me become obsessively seduced by many a, seemingly, splendid thing over the years. Though I always thought myself to be far too chilled, content with being content, to invest in the chase. The intoxicating, albeit fleeting, thrill of acquiring another hit right before the craving kicks in again. A road resembling a clear path to self-destruction? No, thank you.

Though, this is simply not true. I was a smoker from the age of thirteen. An entry I put down to a boy two years above me, his face always obscured in a cloud of Marlboro Red fog. I so desperately wanted to impress him (I would end my long engagement with nicotine over a decade later). Then, on a marginally less life-threatening scale, there’s the coffee I simply have to consume before 9am. I don’t feel like myself otherwise.

That’s the funny thing with addictions. They never appear to be that insufferable. You rarely question their goodness. They just are, humming away in the background, part of your individual makeup. An everyday elixir on good day, a fire blanket on life’s dilemmas on the bad. The most gripping addiction of them all? The one that – for the most part subconsciously – has shaped my outlook on just about everything (excluding the obvious: familial relationships have a habit of fucking us up in both big and small ways)? Romantic comedies.

It started innocently enough. Through TV shows mostly. Friends, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Saved By The Bell, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. You may not peg these as rom-coms in the strictest sense, but – oh my – they were saturated with an element of will-they-won’t-they? Or perhaps that’s just what I was looking for. The happy ending. I definitely sought this out later.

Greedily, I absorbed it all. Constantly. Taking mental notes along the way. (If I had a Netflix queue in the mid-noughties it would read like I was researching how to live my life like a romantic comedy.) During the tail end of my – relatively inexperienced – teen years it offered a romantic blueprint of sorts. Aha! This is what relationships could be like, I thought. It all seemed so simple. And, yes, wonderfully romantic. In retrospect, I wonder if some of these films encouraged me to accept something that’s actually deeply unhealthy in real-life relationships. That you can deceive and be deceived – sometimes a cocktail of both these ingredients – and get away with it. In fact, according to rom-com scripture, it can even be quite charming.

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A few personal favourites over the years, to put this in context. 10 Things I Hate About You (the leading guy lies (he dates a girl for a bet), she finds out, is understandably upset, forgives him, they kiss, the end). Never Been Kissed (she lies, he finds out, is understandably upset, forgives her, they kiss, the end). Same goes for the likes of While You Were Sleeping, She’s All That, You’ve Got Mail, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, to name just a few. Films I’ve have watched, and loved, multiple times.