What do you do after your love life goes wrong? You watch a rom-com. Rom-coms are not only funny, heartfelt, and full of happy endings but they also fill our gloriously delusional hopes for love.
When something in our love life goes wrong, we turn to rom-coms, so they can fill the void in our hearts and feed us all the fantasies that are probably never going to happen with the person who just ignored your message for the past 6 hours. He’s not busy, He’s Just Not That Into You.
There is a rom-com for every taste, or may I say every type of romantic relationship. When you like your best friend and want to believe you are going to end up together, watch When Harry Met Sally. When you want to assure yourself, he/she is obviously in love with you but they are not ready to accept that yet (yeah sure they aren’t), watch Something’s Gotta Give. Rom-coms also restore our hope for love because they always have a happy ending. They are like pizza—even when it’s mediocre it’s still good because it’s pizza and you can’t go wrong with pizza. They are reliable and safe. No matter how toxic and messed up the characters’ relationship may be, or for that matter your relationship in real life, they always end up together even though it’s probably unhealthy.
Rom-coms not only help us cope with the void in our hearts, but if you are lucky enough and have a significant other who truly loves you, they are always the perfect genre to watch. They will only strengthen the love you have for each other after you spent the entire movie ugly crying. Mind you, in order to sob you really have to buy into all the almost impossible scenarios rom coms try to sell you, but if you are a hopeless romantic, you’ll believe it and cry the entire movie. Rom-coms transport us to another world, literally. They are set in a myriad of places from the Italian countryside (Under the Tuscan Sun, 2003) to a NYC duplex (Duplex, 2003). They fill our hearts no matter what part of the world they are set in. Next time you either want to cope with your romantic life, or just simply enjoy a warm and fuzzy film, pick up a classic 90s’ rom-com.
Laura Sainz is a first-year student at FIU. She enjoys the small things in life with her favorites being rom coms and sunsets. She also loves reading but has a bad habit of reading 10 different books at the same time.