Dear marriage: Go fuck yourself -or- my 's' key is sticky tonight

So I just watched this movie. Classic chic flic. This is what I do when I have the night alone: drink beer, make oven pizza and watch a shitty girly movie.

The movie, He's Just Not that Into You, starts off okay. (by the way, I'm totally going to ruin the ending for anyone who cares, which you don't [trust me]) The basic opening premise is that women tell each other these fairy tale stories to make eachother feel better about their shitty love life. Stuff like... Oh, I have this friend whose boyfriend cheated on her but it the end it only made their relationship stronger! Or.... My cousin had a crush on a coworker for YEARS and he never showed interest until one day she found out he was secretly in love with her this whole time! Basically the point was that these stories are the exception to the rule : If someone doesn't seem interested, then they probably aren't.

And I thought.. hey, what an interesting point. That love isn't a fucking fairy tale. It just happens. It generally takes work to make it last and even then sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes when you care about someone they just don't care back. Or some sort of good dose of realism like that. Either way, at least it was different. BUT THEN THEY FUCKING RUINED IT.

For example: couple has been together for 7 years, not married. She wants it and he doesn't believe in it. I'm thinking... AWESOME. Finally a movie that doesn't treat marriage as the end all and be all of couple-hood, that any couple that doesn't eventually get married isn't by default settling into a dissatisfied, unhappy and pathetic existence. But then she breaks up with him. And I'm like... well fuck her, she was a tool anyways. But then they get back together because she realises that what she really wants is him. And I'm like... Good! She gets it, you don't need to be married to be happy. THEN HE FUCKING PROPOSES. At this point I was holding out hope that maybe, just MAYBE, she would refuse to let him compromise his ideals or even, god forbid, re-evaluated why she even needed marriage. But no, they do the deed and presumably live happily ever after.

I could go through the list of interesting storylines that they ruined for the hollywood happy endings: woman who is meeting people online (but that's too pathetic for hollywood so they have her hookup with a real dude), guy and girl who form a friendship (but they can't be friends! They're opposite sexes! They MUST end up falling in love with eachother!), man who falls in love with a woman other than his wife (but hollywood can't encourage that sort of thing so the man gets a divorce and he and his mistress end up sad and alone [god forbid that we admit the possibility that people are complicated and that we can't control who we fall in love with] ).

I didn't actually expect that this movie be different but the fact that it presented this other storyline other than the classic cliches made it all the more frustrating when they turned around and said "Nah, JUST KIDDING! Life really is a fairy tale where all the good people get what they want and meanies like cheating husbands and mistresses don't get shit!"

I don't get marriage. It's so artificial. If you really want to be with someone then you are with them. You don't need marriage to make that happen. People always say that it's a sign of commitment to one another, but I see it as a way to stop having to think about your relationship. It's tied away in a tidy box so you don't have to consider what you really mean to eachother or why you're together.

I know i'm overgeneralizing. I don't acutally think all marriage is bad. I just don't think it's necessary. Same as children. But I'll save that rant for another day.


Sorry for the rambling, but I wrote my final exam of the semester, and more than likely last for my BFA , today and I feel a little restless.

But really I need to get up at 4:30am tomorrow so I should head to bed.