Unrealistic portrayal of love leads to disappointment

Love: a four-letter word that means so many different things to different people.

Love can mean to feel affection for or to like someone or a particular object. To a normal, single, young woman, love can seem only a far-off dream.

In movies, love always is portrayed the same way. Guy meets girl, they fall in love, something bad happens, then they overcome it. As young girls, we are shown movies such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast. When girls grow up, they like to watch, read or listen to anything that shows that kind of love. They think Prince Charming is going to come and save them.

The odds of that happening in real life are slim. Take music: It has a lot of love songs in circulation. Love is the topic of choice. From Disney to pop to rock, love is in the music. It makes people think love is just going to come out and announce itself.

Love songs tell people that love is not a dream, that it happens all the time. For some that might be true, but it doesn’t happen the same way the songs say it will. Love is not something you wish for and it just happens. Remember, love has to be worked for. Few artists mention that in their lyrics.

In real life, people fall in and out of love all the time. Young people think it is going to be easy to find their “better half,” but usually they are wrong. I’m not saying that love doesn’t happen with a look across the room, but more often than not, love takes work.

In a society like ours, divorce is a normal thing. It has become so casual that many people push for divorce at the first sign of trouble. But there are a lot of people, such as my parents and grandparents, who work at their happiness and keep the love alive instead of giving up after one bad moment.

Some of the most popular books that have been written, whether in the past or a new work of fiction, have action, suspense and romance as prevailing themes. Each one is different in how it conveys its message, but each one is the same.

A few examples are A Walk to Remember, the Twilight series and The Mortal Instruments series. They all portray love in different ways. The difference between books and other examples of fabricated love is that books tend to explain more and in a real-life kind of way. I like books more for their romance, because most of the time, it could happen that way – minus the supernatural stuff.

Love is hard, but it’s out there somewhere. As a single woman, it is hard to think that way, but keeping in mind that it doesn’t happen like in the movies, music and some books say it does.

Yet it still gives me hope. So when I pull out my favorite love movies, such as A Cinderella Story, Hairspray, Ever After and Romeo + Juliet, I just keep thinking that maybe someday, I will be in my own love story.

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