Love can’t buy me happiness

By Scott Yun Ho

IfTV has taught me anything, it’s that nobody deserves Sandra Bullock, and also that I’m not eligible for the “one size fits all” version of happily-ever-after we see on screens.

A lot of fictional romances model themselves after fairy tales, where problems are simple and romantic love conquers all. Though it makes for cute clichés that are sweet in moderation, the sheer amount of unrealistic stories we consume makes it hard to not have unrealistic expectations in real life.

When I was growing up, the TV romances I consumed were usually punctuated with a marriage — something that I didn’t think was available to little, closeted me. And it didn’t help that the only people shown having happy endings were a skin tone lighter than me.

Throwaway dialogue didn’t help either — side characters usually emphasized that love is the ultimate reason-to-be and that the protagonist is crazy for thinking otherwise.

These lines feel rather archaic in hindsight, like screenwriters wanted me to drop everything and fulfil my destiny of being a husband in a picturesque, white nuclear family.

Luckily for me, I’m an anxious homosexual who’s a bit too tan to pull that off.

To clarify, I’m not calling for the abolition of rom-coms — I love a good fictional romance that makes me blush and kick my feet under my blankets. And I know it would be logistically impossible to do justice to every form of love in a two-hour made-for-television pro- gram. I just want more nuance. I just want romantic dialogue to stop implying that people are broken if they aren’t romantically-involved.

The human experience is too vast to say that every person is destined for the usual romance, then marriage.

Plenty of couples are happy never tying the knot. Plenty of people are happy without a romantic partner. Hell, plenty of people are happy without potato chips — meaning anything is possible.

There are so many different ways to live that it feels a bit naive to idealize romance to the point where expectations become unrealistic.

I’ve seen acquaintances go into relationships expecting their missing half, only to find a fully-formed, complex person. Even friends who are well into their happily-ever-after love still have problems that would be considered unbecoming of a “fairy tale romance.”

I’m painfully aware that true love’s kiss won’t pay my bills or be a proper substitute for my antidepressants. But for a long time, I thought life might be dramatically better if I could have a “happy-ending” romance, just like in the movies.

I don’t know what my own fairytale ending is going to look like, but I do know that I’m going to have one. It might be with a partner, or it might not.

But I know one thing for sure: it’s going to involve potato chips and lying in bed.