What Has Hollywood Taught Us About Dating?

Movies are so far removed from reality in many ways, but in others, they’re simply more exaggerated versions of real life. Real life dating these days is accessible to us in so many forms, and this only offers up more lessons to be learned.

Dating is no longer confined to singles bars and friends of friends; sites and apps like Badoo connect us with over 150 million people worldwide. And, with so many films focusing on romance and relationships, we’ve picked up quite a few tips on what we should – and shouldn’t – do in the dating world.

Don’t Chase After People Who Just Aren’t Into You

Based on a self-help book, the 2009 movie He’s Just Not That Into You has the most self-explanatory title we’ve ever seen.

With an all-star cast, the movie deals with a crucial issue – the fact that we ought to stop making excuses for people who simply aren’t into us. Not everything has a fairytale ending, except for Hollywood movies. And even though this is one, it shows that not everything does.

Those little signs that you think mean someone likes you? If someone likes you for real, you’ll know about it. If someone does something adverse to this belief and shows you who they are, believe them. 

Stop Judging People – Especially Women – By Their Pasts

Way back in the day, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel called The Scarlet Letter, based on the puritanical ideals of his time. In it, the protagonist gets pregnant out of wedlock and is shunned by her community and publicly shamed. Not even slightly relatable in the 21st Century, right? Well… not exactly.

2010’s “Easy A” with Emma Stone deals with the sad fact that some people haven’t actually come that far with their judgements. When rumors spread of her character’s so-called “promiscuity”, she faces similar shame. The movie highlights issues such as double standards between men and women, and why none of that stuff actually matters. Someone’s past (or rumors of it) doesn’t define their worth!

Real Life Dating Isn’t Perfect

Obviously, dating with constant arguing and drama isn’t ideal – but that doesn’t mean that absolutely everything has to go to plan.

The premise of most rom-coms out there is based on an obstacle that has to be overcome, but there are perhaps none where this theme is quite so obvious than everyone’s favorite Christmas classic, Love Actually. While it’s technically a British movie, it attained a similar level of success to all of the best Hollywood movies. 

Despite long distances, language barriers, differences in status and uh, “interesting” career choices, relationships were able to prevail. We all learned to persevere when we really care about people we love.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

It sounds a little depressing, but learning that we can’t always have everything we want simply because we want it is an especially good lesson to learn.

500 Days Of Summer starts out with a beautiful love story, but we soon see that things can end just as quickly as they began. Sadly, we can’t control other people or how they feel about us… and in reality, that’s kind of selfish and creepy.

Don’t put too much emphasis on following the teachings of movies (some are frankly ridiculous). However, lessons from the movies can be great at teaching us how to manage love – or they can teach us tough love, too.