Back in the day, they used to make
movies about people falling in
and out of love.
They were called romantic comedies.
They starred Meg Ryan and Sandra
Bullock and Julia Roberts
that made us laugh, made us cry.
And they made us watch them again
and again and again.
But occasionally, one
of these movies actually has a
valuable lesson to teach.
Today, I'm going to talk about two
different romantic comedies made
this century and how a few scenes
from them can help you find your
husband.
I'm Evan Marc Katz, Dating Coach for
Smart, Strong, Successful Women, and
your personal trainer for love.
Welcome to the Love U Podcast.
Stay to the end of this to learn how
a couple of movies may hold the key
to helping you find your right guy.
When we're done, I'll let you know
how you could apply to Love U and
create a relationship that makes you
feel safe, heard, and understood.
Now preface everything.
My first career was as
a screenwriter.
I moved to Los Angeles when I was
twenty-four.
I got an agent and a manager.
I was a writer's assistant on
the TV show, the sitcom
Ellen before she turned into
a talk show.
I was in the Warner Brothers Writers
Workshop.
I finished in the top three in
the first Project Greenlight contest
with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
I went to UCLA Film School.
I did everything except make
money.
So there's really not much of a
point in sharing this, sharing the
story, except for the fact that I
was once Hollywood's most
successful, unsuccessful writer.
So with that,
I want to tell you about these two
movies.
If you haven't seen them, they're
worth your time, at least from my
memory. I tend to see movies once
and then move on. But these two
stuck with me.
One of them is called Serendipity.
It was made in 2001.
Starring John Cusack, as a lovelorn
guy, falls in love with
Kate Beckinsale. It's cute.
And that's a story.
That's the main plot is John
Cusack and Kate Beckinsale meet
and through a series of
coincidences, managed to end up
together. And I'm not giving
anything away. The thing I remember
most about that movie was a subplot
involving Cusack's character best
friend who was played by Jeremy
Piven. Jeremy Piven was the guy
who had it all.
He had a gorgeous
wife. He had the house.
He had the kids.
He had the life.
And Cusack is
envious. He's in his thirties.
He's wondering what's wrong with
him, why it's so hard for him to
find the right person.
Maybe this rings a bell.
And he's looking at his friend with
envy at the life he
created.
Have you ever looked at your married
friend with some measure of envy
at the life that they have?
Well, watch this movie,
because about two thirds through the
movie, we discover
that Jeremy Piven is getting
a divorce.
The guy with perfect life looked
great on paper.
These days looks great on social
media. We thought they were so
happy. We thought they were the
perfect couple and they had looks
and money and
traveled and they posted their
pictures. And sure enough
looking at other people's lives and
trying to assume that you know
what's going on inside their
relationship is an exercise
in futility. You have no idea
what's going on in people's
relationships.
And in fact, I would
say with some measure of authority
that you wouldn't want
to marry
any of your friend's husbands.
That's how confidant I am that your
guy hasn't been taken and that
your friend isn't necessarily
living the life that you think she's
leading.
Just because she's married.
So I think that's one to
plant a flag and really consider
how much we spend, how much time we
spend envying other people
based on social media.
Perception whether than
the reality is do you really want
this person's life?
Do you really want this person's
partner in everything that comes
with it?
And that's sometimes the people who
appear to be happiest from the
outside aren't actually happy.
It's been said before and I
will repeat it here.
The goal is not to get you
married.
The goal is for you to be happily
married.
And I remember reading somewhere
that two-thirds of marriages are
unhappy. That doesn't surprise me in
the least.
My job is to make you into the one
third.
Most people are unconscious about
how they got to where they are and
they just feel stuck in their life.
So, people who have a 40-year
marriage, they can
call it a success.
But if they were miserable for most
of the time and relationships
take work and we stayed together
for the kids and oh,
no, no, you don't
have to be those people.
We want to narrow our
search and create great
relationships, not just
relationships.
And we want to be like John Cusack.
We want not to be like Jeremy Piven.
The next movie I want to talk about,
this goes a little bit deeper.
This movie called 500 Days of
Summer.
Zooey Deschanel and Joseph
Gordon led in 2009.
And I was so struck
when I saw this movie that I blogged
about it.
And I am going to pull up what I
wrote 11 years ago
because I think it's relevant.
And I think there are
two important lessons that you can
learn from 500 Days Of Summer.
So the movie itself, which you
haven't heard of it, it's not a big
name, romantic comedy.
It recounts a two year on and
off-again relationship of Tom
and Summer.
And they're in their twenties and
they work together.
And Summer, the
woman, does not believe in
relationships and boyfriends.
While Tom is
a hopeless romantic.
He's smitten and he knows that
this Summer is the woman that he
wants to spend the rest of his life
with and eventually through
hard work. He wins her over.
But the entire movie, she keeps him
at arm's length.
Right.
That's the movie.
And eventually, she leaves him
brokenhearted to find someone
else.
The end.
What a romantic comedy.
First of all, this
is what makes a great movie.
It's not just getting a happy ending
in real life. You want to have a
happy ending, but in the movie,
a movie like Rocky, where he loses.
That's a really great ending because
it reflects sometimes what happens
in real life.
In this movie, the boy doesn't get
the girl. So let's look at
that closely.
Number one, if the gender
roles were reversed, this
movie doesn't get made.
Fascinating.
It's the story of a man who
takes on
the gender role reversal.
The woman's role of wanting
a relationship, being smitten,
being treated poorly, and getting
devastated that he invested so
much time in someone who never
was willing to reciprocate.
It's painfully sad.
It's such a reflection of real life.
The boy doesn't get the girl of his
dreams.
If you could tell me a movie
where there's a girl who loves a boy
madly, spends
two years chasing him, and ends up
devastated at the end of the movie.
You were a better film
aficionado than I am, and you could
put that in the comments.
And the best friend's wedding
doesn't count because she wasn't
really madly in love with her best
friend. She was just jealous.
I think it's interesting that they
could make a movie about a guy
who doesn't get the girl because you
don't see too many movies about the
girl that doesn't get the guy more
important takeaway.
And the thing that I really want you
to take from this entire video
was the snippet.
And hopefully, we're going to
include this in this podcast.
This video is
Tom's Main character.
He's talking about this
Summer and how perfect she is.
And he's venting to his
best friend. Venting is the wrong
word. He's just putting her up on a
pedestal.
And his best friend tells him another
version of this narrative and
his narrative is he met his wife in
the seventh grade and he's been with
her ever since.
And he's looked around them.
He's met tons of amazing women,
but he realized that they weren't
perfect either.
So he decides to stay with his wife
because even though she isn't
perfect, she's real.
Right, the clip will
show that better than I do.
So this
is a lovely concept.
This is the way I feel about love.
So many of us get smitten with
someone. We idealize them
and then put them up on a pedestal.
We focus only on their good traits,
not on their bad traits.
He's cute.
He's funny.
He's smart.
He's successful.
He sometimes does sweet things.
And moments when we're together, we
have such an amazing connection.
We've had such great sex
and we ignore their flaws.
We're selfish.
They put themselves first
and you second, they're not willing
to go the extra mile.
They're not willing to sacrifice.
They don't want to
commit.
They don't make you feel safe.
They don't allow you to relax.
They don't handle interpersonal
conflict well.
And they yell or they pull away,
they break up. And that's what's
painful about this movie.
Just a gender role reversal where
the woman is the one who's all
wrapped up in herself and ends
up breaking a guy's heart.
So true wisdom is in
recognizing there isn't
a perfect person who meets all of
our criteria.
There's no such thing.
And the criteria that we often use
to choose people is often faulty as
well because I could hand you the
perfect man. But if that perfect man
doesn't want to commit, he's not
perfect.
If that perfect man is
insensitive to your emotional needs,
he is not perfect and wouldn't make
a great husband even if I waved a
magic wand. So the way to find love
is to recognize that we should
all be thrilled to have someone who
loves us unconditionally, above
all.
And we don't want to be like this
character, even though he's
a likable character
who pursues a dream and
a fantasy that's not meant to be
for the whole movie.
And thinks for most of the
time that because they both like the
Smiths and have strong physical
attraction, that therefore they're
meant to be a couple.
Realize your perfect
mate is the one who is real.
And the one who treats you like
gold. My name is Evan Marc Katz.
Thank you for tuning into the Love U
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