Exposing the ‘Happily Ever After’ Myth in 2021
Disney lied to us.
When we think about it, happily ever after is a loaded concept. We all want happiness. We all want to be in a happy and sustainable relationship that lasts a lifetime, but ever after, misconstrues the reality of what love looks like.
The journey of love is nowhere near as linear or straightforward as Disney may have you believe (yes, shocking revelation). It’s a gambit of trial and error, a game of risk of having to ourselves to a world of greater pain for a chance reward; even then, it still may not be guaranteed when it’s said and done.
Drawing from my own experiences, the myths, the science, and the media, I’ll be looking at the idea of happily ever after and see it is plausible in the 2021 landscape or is it merely fantasy that we need to put to bed (pun intended).
Un-Disney-fying expectations
Life is not the spectacular thrill-ride every day, it’s underwhelmingly typical for the most part, and only a few times is it ever exceptional.
Yet, again and again, billboards, media, and everything in between are vying for our attention through scaremongering or telling us the missing piece that would fix our life for the better, but it’s simply not true. The same can be said about our perceptions of our ideal relationships. Filters, parties and posing pictures can easily make us believe that every day is a Great Gatsby-inspired event, but that is nowhere near the case.
Disney has played a hand in putting a positive spin on the realities of life, even to the point of changing previous literature and folklore that originally had darker endings:
- Sleeping Beauty’s Aurora is sexually assaulted by a king while still asleep. This leads to her birthing twins, all while still asleep.
- In the original Little Mermaid, Ariel can either kill the Prince to become a mermaid again or kill herself by turning into sea foam.
- Despite the all-singing and dancing gargoyles, the original ending of The Hunchback of Notre Dame sees Quasimodo burying himself alive with his fallen love Esmerelda.
As much as Disney and social media may have us believe in the Happily Ever After ideal, there’s just one crucial element that they fail to take into account: the imperfect nature of life and its darker realities.
Sex Sells: the allure and downfall of lust.
‘Sex sells’ because it attracts attention and because, mostly, we are hard-wired to notice sexualized content. It stems from our evolutionary need to reproduce to continue our species.
I’m desperately trying to remember a time where I heard a love song that wasn’t about the chase, sex, or heartbreak.
Movies and series such as 50 Shades of Grey and Bridgerton sexualize the taboo. It’s not based on love; it’s the raunchiness of the physical. It’s glorified soft-porn. It accentuates and exaggerates lust posing as love, misconstruing the expectations of what a loving relationship is.
According to a leading relationship charity counselor, Sharon Chapman, when asked about the effect of porn on relationships:
“As porn has become more accessible, this distorts a person’s view of what a normal sex life should and could be like. I think it has also made sex more extreme. When you look at a sexual image that is incredibly graphic and exaggerated in terms of sexual performance, it takes away the mystery and the element of experimentation between two people.”
Emotional intimacy plays a vital role in sex, and it plays an integral part in how a couple builds trust, communication, and feelings of security, but this need is not being met through porn.
With porn now filling the role as the go-to forum for sexual education, expectations are being warped, particularly within young men and women, misleading not only what a sexual relationship entails but how love should look.
Friend Zone= Couple Goals
Love that lasts decades and a lifetime, although, on paper, sounds endearing and beautiful, like happiness. It takes work. We don’t like to hear that in a world of instant gratification of the lustful and material. We don’t like to hear that we have to break away from who we are and evolve to coexist and thrive with another person. We want to indulge; we want the sex-part without the responsibility.
According to a study conducted by Rutgers University, love is a chemical cocktail of hormones created through an amalgamation of lust, attraction, and attachment. The latter is the predominant of the three that leads to long-term relationships. Although the other two have a hand in romantic endeavors, it’s in the attachment where long-term friendships can be cultivated.
When we’re friends with our partners, our relationship bleeds deeper than that of the flesh.
Having a friendship beyond everything leads to better communication, trust, and, better yet, you want to be around each other.
I’ve witnessed what happens when the bandwidth of communication between a couple becomes narrower and narrower to the point where the couple becomes glorified housemates with the same bank account.
I believe that this warped belief that to address dissatisfaction would be to admit failure. Still, in reality, dissatisfaction is what can drive people to grow their relationship into something more.
When it poses a challenge, the complacency to grow has become the norm, and trying and breaking away from that makes bouncing back a real challenge.
Bumps in the road will happen, but it takes a team of two to overcome it.
The happily ever after may be a myth that links happiness with love, but both require evolving individually and cohesively for there to be even a shot at long-term success.