When Great Love Isn’t Good for You: How Media Narratives Shape Our Understanding of Romance
By Natalie McCarty
The media teaches us that once we find our “great love,” we must hold onto it with everything we have. From vintage Hollywood love stories to modern romantic sagas, the narrative is always the same: true love is not only rare, but it’s also forever.
The Notebook (2004)
We’re taught to believe that when love arrives and feels straight out of a movie, we must fight to hold onto it forever. This belief is ingrained in our collective consciousness through films, books, and songs, from Casablanca to The Notebook.
But what happens when that love no longer fits? When does holding onto it start to hold you back?
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
I’ve known great love in its entirety, through all its many stages—like a montage full of improbable coincidences and emotionally charged reunions. Scenes of breaking up, making up, and breaking up again. From the epic meet-cute to the vows of sickness and health, it was a love that healed wounds not just out of care, but out of devotion. To be cradled in your sadness and come out on the other side. To share in each other's triumphs and dreams. But also, to argue like the classics: storming out of apartments, only to run back in the rain, dragging myself to the stairs to find him already at the top, frantic and searching for me.
Sound of Metal (2019)
As Bell Hooks once wrote, "Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion." Healing in that rare, sacred kind of closeness where another becomes your mirror. That kind of love that first buds when your hands brush, reaching for the same thing. The exciting love found in dances in kitchens to songs on the record player. The falling-back-in-love moments, over stolen glances during a long drive to nowhere. The deep love of knowing someone else entirely. The quiet, comfortable love—sharing headphones, tying each other’s shoes, trading clothes, falling into each other’s routines. Stepping into a life shared. The small things that only a costume designer or scriptwriter might notice in a film—except this time, it’s your life. And it’s really yours.
It was in those moments that I felt everything the movies had ever promised me.
There’s not a single romantic comedy or something of the sort that I can watch without a pang of familiarity: For that really was how it felt. That’s how it was. It was epic in its entirety. It felt like destiny. And it also felt like doom.
Past Lives (2023)
And because I’d felt that kind of romance—because I’d seen Carrie go back to Big, again and again, and every other show or movie seemed to nod in approval—I kept thinking I had to stay. That I should stay.
If my relationship had that elusive je ne sais quoi we media lovers spend our lives chasing, wouldn’t it be foolish to walk away? Surely, leaving would mean writing myself out of my own love story.
Because if it felt this big, this cinematic, this meant that surely it had to be the real thing.
Bones and All (2022)
Of course, I’m speaking in an amalgamation, for I’ve known many kinds of love in my life—romantic, fleeting, and all-consuming. You name it, I’ve experienced it at least once or twice with some guy or another. But after spending a couple of years being single, standing still long enough to reflect, I’ve come to understand this: just because that love is gone doesn’t mean it’s forgotten. The love I once felt, so intense and overwhelming, still lives inside me; tucked into the corners of my heart, lingering between the spaces of old memories.
The truth is, I’m simply not that person anymore. That version of me still exists in the time I shared with them, but the version I’ve grown into—the one who’s learned to move beyond the cycles I once found myself in—is finally free. Free of the push and pull, the repeating patterns, and of what once was. And in that freedom, I not only remembered who I was before the longing, but also met the woman I was always becoming.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
I am a romantic realist—not just in love, but in the way I approach life. I’ve never seen moments as insignificant, especially those spent loving someone else, as they have profoundly shaped me.
Film has long been a companion to my romanticism—and, at times, an opponent to my need for realism. It nurtures the idea that love should be cinematic, sweeping, and unforgettable. But what the movies never taught me is that sometimes, even the most epic love belongs only to a former version of yourself.
As Joni Mitchell sings in "Both Sides Now", time changes our understanding of love.
I know now that I’ve dated men I didn’t love, and I’ve loved men so deeply that it really did feel spiritual. But time, experience, and introspection have taught me something the movies never did: chemistry isn’t the same as commitment. The things that make for a great story—star-crossed lovers, chance encounters, grand gestures—don’t always lead to a sustainable life.
Bones and All (2022)
There are seasons when a great love blooms, and seasons when that same love begins to confine you. When I was younger, I could give all of my time and energy to someone else, but the person I am now—older, steadier, wiser—understands that love shouldn’t require you to contort yourself to fit inside it. It should arrive with ease. It should enhance your life, not become the center of it.
The Notebook (2004)
Contrary to what we’re taught by some of the most celebrated love stories in cinema and literature, leaving isn’t a failure—it can be an act of self-awareness. In fact, it may be a selfless act of true love: to love someone enough to recognize that you’re not meant to stay together, and to love yourself enough to walk away.
La La Land (2016)
We’ve been conditioned to believe that love is only real if it lasts forever. That if it ends, it must not have been strong enough or true enough. But the reality is far more nuanced.
Love can be meaningful, formative, and life-changing… and still not be the happy ending.
After Sunset (2004)
That gap between what we’ve been shown and what we experience is widening. A study in Psychology of Popular Media found that people who consume high volumes of romantic media are more likely to believe in the concept of soulmates. Similarly, YouGov reports that over half of millennials believe in “the one,” a number significantly higher than Gen X or Boomers. And yet, nearly 50% of single adults under 30 say they aren’t even looking for a relationship. This contradiction tells us something important: the expectations don’t match the lived reality.
Romantic media trains us to chase the grandiose, the perfect ending, the person who “completes” us (I do love that Jerry Maguire). But when real relationships involve misaligned values, burnout, or simply growing apart, we’re left wondering what went wrong. We rarely see those parts reflected back at us. Instead, we get stories like La La Land, where the couple parts ways with a wistful smile across a crowded room. It’s beautiful—but it centers on what’s lost, not what’s gained.
La La Land (2016)
Beyond the ultimate that is Normal People, Celine Song’s Past Lives is one of the few exceptions, in my opinion, with its central idea that “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.” Love and life don’t just take; they teach us. Past Lives shows us what it might look like if we stopped thinking of endings as failures, and instead saw them as a sign of growth. It's also a way to preserve the passage of time, gracefully, and with love.
Past Lives (2023)
The truth is, love doesn’t have to last forever to be valid. It can be real, transformative, and still come to a close. The person I was in past relationships isn’t at all the person I am now. I don’t look back with regret, but with perspective. I can honor what those relationships taught me without needing to hold onto them. Leaving can be loving, and sometimes, great love isn’t necessarily good love. And that’s not tragic. That’s human.
Normal People (2018)
