Mainstream Media Has Killed Healthy Romantic Relationships

Six harsh truths that do away with discriminating stereotypes and unrealistic expectations.

I’m a man and I like being in a committed relationship.

Don’t get me wrong — I know the single life can be a ton of fun. The flirting, the adventure, the sex with strangers you just met or multiple people on the same day.

It can be quite the thrill and a no-commitments, free-floating, do-what-you-want lifestyle.

But at one point in our lives, we have to ask ourselves if that is what we want to do forever.

How much of a man you are isn’t measured by how many girls or guys screamed your name into your pillows. That’s an arbitrary metric used by immature boys and wannabe men who have no other source of self-esteem.

Instead, your manliness is measured by how much you are able to have a functioning, meaningful, and committed romantic relationship with another human being.

It feels great, too. Having someone you’d trust your life with and who gives you this warm, fuzzy feeling when you think of them. Taking trips together, having deep talks, and being goofy. Butterflies, emotions, affection, and love.

There’s only one problem: Relationships aren’t what most people think they are. The media has done a pretty good job at distorting their image into something romanticized and highly unrealistic that sells well but couldn’t be further from the truth.

It starts with Disney movies, spreads through sitcoms, and ends with The Notebook.

It’s full of superficial, discriminating, and messed up stereotypes.

Men are depicted as either sex-obsessed womanizers, successful supermen, or dumb good-for-nothings who plop down on the couch, crack open a beer, and only watch TV after work.

Women are painted as drama queens, slaves to their emotions, or hot but dull eye-candy. They seem to always have a headache, are never in the mood, and if they dare to act out their sexual desires, they are promptly shamed as sluts.

And if that wasn’t enough, the plot is always the same. Either it’s Prince Charming on a white horse whom the damsel in distress instantly falls in love with. Or it’s endless courting until the woman in question finally realizes that Clark Kent was her Superman all the time.

It’s all about the fleeting emotional highs you get from making out in pouring rain and having steamy sex afterward. Actually building a relationship, caring about the person, and growing together through the highs and lows? Hah, as if. You just need to realize two are soulmates, then you’ll fall in love, nothing else will matter, and you’ll be happy ever after.

What a fucking shitshow.

But you buy into it through cultivation and are deeply disappointed and terrified when your expectations don’t match reality. You chase the perfect partner and think you’ve found them every time you get into something serious, only to have your hopes shattered again. And every time you see the idealized image of your presumably picture-perfect relationship turn into smoke and evaporate on the horizon, you get a little more resentful.

No blame, I had to go through a couple of relationships to realize this as well. From smooth sailing to flying high and crashing hard, from months to multiple years, I’ve had it.

But how do you break this cycle and end up in a functioning, meaningful, and committed romantic relationship that doesn’t turn to shit after the first few months of infatuation?

Well, the first step is to face the harsh truths that no Disney movie talks about.

Soulmates and Perfect Relationships Don’t Exist

“To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.”

— Criss Jami

Ugh, promising start. Now, before you accuse me of negativity and pull out the stories of your friend John Doe who has found the perfect wife, let me explain.

You’ll never find your soulmate with whom everything is smooth sailing and nothing can get you two lovebirds off track. It feels like that, but only until you have your first major fight. That’s when you discover if you two really are compatible or not.

When you’re in a relationship, there will always be problems and issues. Every now and then, you’ll have a little argument over what to eat for dinner or a big one over which city you should move to or how to raise your kids.

The key to a great relationship isn’t finding someone you don’t have problems with, but someone you like to have and solve these problems with.

That doesn’t mean you should enjoy fighting each other on a regular basis. The best fight is the one that doesn’t happen at all. But in an intimate relationship, the question isn’t if there will be disagreements, but rather how you solve them.

Overcoming these obstacles together makes you bond just as much as letting the good times roll.

Humans tend to take things for granted. We only appreciate what we put effort into. We waste tons of water when we only have to turn on the tap, but we’re careful not to spill a single drop if we have to walk an hour to the nearest well and back.

Even if you found yourself in the perfect relationship with your soulmate, you wouldn’t appreciate it without all the little quarrels and the effort that comes with it.

Don’t look for someone with whom everything is smooth sailing, but someone you can get through the storm with.

A Relationship Won’t Save Your Life

If I had to name the most violated piece of relationship advice, it would be this.

Look, I get it. Your life is full of issues and having someone to cuddle you and help you out when things get tough sounds like a real improvement.

And to a certain extent, it is. There is only one problem.

Birds of a feather flock together, and the chance that you attract someone whose life is a bit of a mess as well is rather high. More often than not, you two will end up in a codependent relationship with little chance of betterment.

I often hear my single guy friends say “if only I had a girlfriend I’d be so much happier”. No. That’s not how this shit works. A functioning relationship requires constant effort and it comes with commitments and responsibilities. If you don’t even have your own life in order, how will you deal with something on top?

Sort your own issues out first. Nobody will save you, so get your shit together. Once you’ve made it on your own, you’ll attract people who have done the same thing — and that’s when you two can enter a functioning relationship without taking your issues out on each other.

If that doesn’t convince you, look at it this way: Do you want to be with someone because you two need each other as emotional crutches to mask and make up for your issues? Or because you truly want to be with each other, even though you would be happy on your own?

You Can’t Change Your Partner

“No one can change a person, but a person can be the reason someone changes.”

— Shannon L. Alder

We all have our quirks. And anyone who has been in a relationship for a while knows that some of these quirks your partner has can drive you nuts. Yours drive them nuts too, sometimes.

The problem isn’t that your significant other is a bit of a strange character at times — it’s that you think you can change them. You can’t.

I’ve tried, multiple times. I’ve tried to get the workaholic to spend less time in front of her laptop and more of it with a cold beer in the sun. I’ve tried to turn the party girl into a more structured and ambitious individual so she could achieve her dreams.

Both times, the result was a lot of fighting and a breakup. My bad — learn from my mistakes and save yourself the hassle.

If your partner is a bit of a couch potato, they won’t all of a sudden hit the gym six times a week because you want them to. You can either use force or manipulation, but both violate their boundaries and are definitely not the way to a happy relationship.

However, that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with your partner’s flaws till death do you part.

You can inspire them to change when you lead by example. You can ask the right questions, talk, and educate them. You can support them when they struggle.

But you can’t change them. They have to do that themselves. And as such, there’s no guarantee that they’ll do it, so don’t build your relationship on the hope that they might do one day.

Accept your partner as they are and if they grow in the right direction and change for the better, that’s an awesome bonus.

You Are Responsible, Even If It’s Not Your Fault

“The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

When things go south, it’s easy to blame it on your partner. I’ve done it more times than I can count.

If she could for once make up her mind about what to eat, we would fight less. If she wasn’t so prudish and could let herself go more, I wouldn’t have cheated on her. If she didn’t take ages to do her makeup, I wouldn’t have missed my flight and gotten angry at her.

I hate to admit it, but I was full of shit.

In fact, I was 100% responsible for everything I did. And just like that, you are 100% responsible for your actions, just as your partner is 100% responsible for theirs.

Notice that I said responsible instead of at fault. There’s a clear distinction that has to be made.

It’s not your fault that your partner starts fights with you, steals your sandwich from the fridge, or flakes on date night — but it is your responsibility to decide how to deal with it.

This also works the other way round. It’s not your fault you had a bad day at work or Jimmy invited you to a once in a lifetime pool party. But you are responsible for taking your bad mood out on your partner or ditching them although you had agreed on date night.

Don’t put yourself in the victim role. Your life and your relationship can only prosper if you take responsibility for your actions and behaviors.

Relationship Sex > Single Sex

There are two types of experiences: Broad and deep.

Sleeping with 50 different people will give you a broad range of experiences. Everyone is unique and it can be a lot of fun to explore different bodies and kinks when you get frisky with someone you met twenty minutes ago.

If you want to experience a real gamechanger, find someone who’s sexually compatible with you. Spend time exploring each other’s sexualities, building trust, and getting attuned to each other’s bodies and minds. It will blow yours.

I’m not saying that you can’t have good sex with random strangers. Damn, you can for sure.

But mind-blowing sex requires a certain level of intimacy, vulnerability, and trust. It requires emotions as well as knowing each other’s anatomy and how you can get them going.

In any relationship I’ve had, the sex kept getting better and better the longer we knew each other. There are ups and downs but the overall trend is a positive one. What you do after twelve months often is on a completely different level than what you did in the beginning.

Men, if you invest the time and effort to make your woman feel comfortable, trust you and enjoy the sex with you, if she can really let herself go — it’s going to take your socks off.

It’s a long process, but totally worth it.

Love Is a Choice, Not a Feeling

“No one falls in love by choice, it is by chance. No one stays in love by chance, it is by work. And no one falls out of love by chance, it is by choice.”

When you think about true love, you think of butterflies in your stomach, passion, mutual understanding, not being able to take your mind off each other, and steamy sex you two have in a candle-illuminated whirlpool.

This isn’t love. It’s lust or infatuation at best. That honeymoon stage will be over at one point, sooner or later. What then? Then you’ll have to decide if you really love each other or if you’ve chased a fleeting high.

True love is a choice. Every relationship requires sacrifices and sooner or later, you’ll have to make a conscious decision about whether you want to make them or not.

Do you want to sacrifice your time for your partner when they need you even though you’d like to relax and hang out with your friends instead?

Do you want to expend the energy it takes to support them when they’re going through a hard time?

Do you want to give up some of your sexual satisfaction because they aren’t into anal?

Do you want to put in the time and energy to work things out after a fight or not?

True love evolves and grows over time. With every time you go to hell and back with someone and come out hand in hand, your love grows.

True love involves a lot of decisions, pain, and sacrifices. And that’s exactly why it runs so much deeper than the infatuation you feel in the beginning.

Loving someone when you’ve got butterflies in your stomach is easy.

But loving someone long after the initial infatuation has faded and you’ve taken off the rose-colored glasses? Loving them despite all their flaws and making the decision to put in the effort and sacrifices to compromise and make it work, over and over?

That’s a decision — and true love.

Did you know that there are three different types of relationships? #1 is doomed, #2 is fine, and #3 is the jackpot.

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