You're comparing us to THEM?! (Love like the movies)

As promised, I am answering questions you're asking. Gabe asked a super good one: "If what girls really need is a strong dependable man, why do some girls love chick flicks where the guy and the girl get in these big heated fights. Do they long for that??" Great question! So great, in fact, that I wanted to take my time in answering it. So here you go!

There are a few reasons girls love the big fight scenes in chick flicks. NOTE: none of those reasons is because she wants to be miserable, fight all of the time, or be with a guy who picks fights with her or is just plain bad news (and here's my two cents on THAT). These reasons are not listed in any particular order.

1. We love the drama. Movies/musicals/plays/dramas/etc excite the psyche. They are entertaining, and that is precisely why they call it the entertainment industry. It is a story, with a building tension, leading to a climactic fight. If the writers did their job right, the viewer has gotten to know the characters, and if out of curiosity than nothing else, we want to know what happens! And as much as they might hate to admit it, I'm willing to bet that at high percentage of guys at least are a little curious how movies like that end.

2. We can relate. Well, to some extent, depending on the person being entertained and the story that is being told. Often times great stories mirror situations that on some level are real, and the conflicts are situations real people experience or fear.

3. We see characters they love (and in romcoms, characters they love together) argue about something that threatens to tear them apart. In the movies (at least of this nature), the couple works it out and still lives happily ever after, even though there might be lingering issues, a little collateral damage, or repercussions of their irrational emotional actions/mistakes. They are things the couple will have to work on. Overall, they give us HOPE that we can work things out on our own lives, that some mountains are not too big, and that obstacles aren't always the end.

We want to be happy and we enjoy seeing others happy, even if on some deep/subconscious/shallow level, we are living vicariously through them. There is a danger there that these movies can romanticize conflict and can have a subtle influence over real-life experiences, but we must not lose our own sense of reality in real-life conflicts. Instead, we keep in mind common threads that make real life relationships/friendships work and last, and hopefully in the heat of those moments, we can understand the difference between love in the movies and love that is real, raw, and rewarding.