Marriage at the Movies

De-mystifying Myths on Matrimony
by Mark L. Lopez, S.J.
(Written for the Windhover)

Given the civil status those 2 letters after my name can afford me, the next best thing to an actual experience of married life is probably what I vicariously get through the movies. Fortunately, the highly critical side of me (which more often than not is what gets me into trouble) has had some good use in helping me filter through what popular culture has swallowed hook, line and sinker. At the very least, this has helped me think twice about Hollywood’s portrayals of marriage that my system has found difficult to ingest. To the more positive end, it has also helped me appreciate lessons learned from unlikely places. Of the many, I here write of 3 of my favorite examples.

The Sleepless in Seattle Syndrome

Every generation has its “meant to be” movie. Ours was Sleepless in Seattle (Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, 1993.), which is consdiered as one of the most successful romantic comedies of all time. Although the phrase (“meant to be”) is used with varying levels of meaning (and consequently varying degrees of truth), taken to the extreme (as in the movie), it can foster the notion that there is that special someone who was created specifically for each and every hopeless romantic in the world. The purpose of life, therefore, is going in search of that someone, be he or she across the continent or on the other side of the world. Such a notion, animated by the “stars” and fancy words like “destiny” and “magic”, becomes the unrelenting quest and driving force for Annie (played by Ryan) in the film.

I was 17 years old and in 2nd year college when I first saw that film. Now, at 30, I can shamelessly admit what I never would have even considered of myself then: I was young and naïve. So there goes my poor excuse for having believed in such a notion at some point in my life.

It was probably Fr. Aydee Dacanay, S.J. (canon lawyer, long time-teacher of the theology of Marriage and Christian Vocation at the Ateneo De Manila University, officiator of weddings and spiritual adviser to hundreds of married couples from among his former students at the said university) who shook the nonsense out of me when he sternly warned against such a view in our theology classes. “Love is a decision – an act of the will”, he repeatedly told us (quoting M. Scott Peck).

Moreover, his admonitions to many a couple seated before him at their wedding, always include the invitation to view matrimony as fruit of a choice made by 2 mature people to promise to love each other and journey together for a lifetime. And it is that decision that is to be blessed by God, and it is that choice (graced and lived-out) that will hold a marriage together and make it truly flourish. Out with the fairy-tale happily-ever-after ending of how destiny and the stars seem to take care of the rest of a story.

Many married couples concur with this more realistic view of the manner of things, especially years after the honeymoon period has ended and the day to day challenges of marriage have kicked-in. There is reportedly an “in-between” feeling, whereby more realistically, compatibility, shared values, shared dreams and a shared sense of vocation, make for that feeling that yes, he or she is “the one for me”, but not in the way portrayed in the movies. And no matter how seemingly “perfect” the match is at the beginning, the nature of married life (with all its difficulties and challenges) cannot be sustained by fairy-tale illusions in the long run. Choice, commitment, and deciding to love after having fallen out of love need to kick in.

The Jerry Maguire Fallacy

Moving on to another box-office success made later in the nineties, we find a hearing imparied couple in an elevator scene before the main characters Jerry and Dorothy, signing to each other the words “You complete me.” (Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger, 1996). The rest of the movie portrays Dorothy (Zellweger) longing for a someone to whom she can say those words, and in the end, Tom Cruise actually telling them to her.

More than having had us at hello, this popular 90’s movie drove home those words to every hopeless romantic’s heart. The Wikipedia entry for Jerry Maguire says “the movie remains famous more than a decade after its release due to such memorable quotes.” Without discounting how fulfilling married life can be (and really is) for many couples, much can be said of the dangers of the “you complete me” fallacy.

For starters, it may build a relationship on the shaky ground of false expectations. Wilkie Au, director of spiritual development services in Los Angeles, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, and author of several books on psycho-spiritual integration has seen this in many of the relationships of people he has counseled and helped through the years. In his book “By Way of the Heart” he writes “There is the false belief that a single individual can satisfy all the affective need which formerly were met by a network of parents, relatives, friends and associates. Marriage counselors often advise clients that no one individual can wholly fulfill the affective needs of another.”

Furthermore, he goes on to quote Henri Nouwen who writes more directly of the danger of such a notion becoming the unconscious justification of unhealthy, co-dependent relationships. “When our loneliness drives us away from ourselves into the arms of our companions in life, we are, in fact, driving ourselves into excruciating relationships, tiring friendships and suffocating embraces…No friend or lover, no husband or wife… will be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness. And by burdening others of these divine expectations, of which we ourselves are only partially aware, we might inhibit the expression of free friendship and love and evoke instead feelings of inadequacy and weakness. Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.”

Chancing upon these readings and reflecting on my own experience (not of marriage but of friendship, of course) all I could say was “How true!”

Adam Redeemed

Swinging, finally, to the better side of Hollywood films, we turn to 50 First Dates (Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, 2004) Ironically, it’s the lessons I’ve picked up from this outrageously funny (borderline-slapstick) romantic comedy that seem to have made good sense. (Now who would have thought that Adam Sandler could be Hollywood’s redemption?)

In the film, Henry Roth (Sandler) finds the girl of his dreams in Lucy (Barrymore), but there’s quite a catch to this catch. He discovers she has a short-term memory problem which allows her to remember only the events that happen within a day. She wakes up every morning, as if somebody pressed a refresh button in her sleep, erasing everything that happened yesterday. In the end, Roth chooses to court and marry her still, and finds creative ways to remind her of the meaning of the ring on her finger that surprises her upon waking everyday.

However silly, comical and absurd, Lucy’s condition might just reflect our own, especially when we become emotionally needy and seek constant reminders and reassurances of love. Perhaps this neediness in itself is a form of amnesia, a forgetting of how much we have already actually been loved. Sometimes our needs get to the better of us. That can make us demanding of our loved ones, or destructive of ourselves and our relationships, instead of being truly grateful, recognizing a graced past, and loving in return.

In Roth, on the other hand, we see a man who takes to the challenge of constantly renewing his vow to demonstrate his love for his beloved, every single day. Now isn’t this the kind of person we all want to try to be ?

The movie ends with a morning scene. Lucy wakes up to find a video-tape beside her. On the tape is a post-it note explaining that the first thing she has to do upon getting out of bed is to watch what’s on the video. To her delight, marvel, awe and surprise (“This happened to me !?!”) she watches all the special moments of their relationship (the 50 or so first dates) captured on video, with messages from other loved ones and friends, to remind and remedy her out of the amnesia. By the time she finishes the video, she is primed up to meet Roth, who waits patiently outside the room, and greets her with a loving embrace. From there they go forth to live another very new day, not happy ever after, but determined always to love in new ways.

Thus far I have written explicitly of love in the context of marriage (all the above characters do end up getting married by the end of the film) but I do hope the things I here tried to impart do also make sense to the religious as well as the lay, to the cynical as much as the quintessentially romantic, to men as to women, married and unmarried alike. After all, loving commitment, which is at the heart of marriage, is what we are all called to, whatever our vocation.