Anon watches a romance movie

There's so many songs, TV shows, movies, etc, that's all romance or love stories that contain very blatant infidelity.

What tickles me is when very monogamous, very religious people talk that stuff up.... Like it's such a good song/movie/show... Ha. You have fantasies of leaving your spouse and running off with a younger, more attractive person. You slut.

I'm not religious, but I found a partner that gets me. Guess what. I'm not fantasizing about running off with some mythical "better" or "more romantic" person. Yeah, we're living together unmarried, and we're good like that. You rushed into marriage for God knows what reasons and now you live in regret. Good job.

Are you saying you don't like piña coladas?
- Piña colada is a "you both awful and deserve each other"

I recently heard Docket by Blondshell for the first time and favorited it right away.

Then I listened again more tuned in and noticed it was about infidelity and thought “aw man”, unfavorited and moved on.

Heard it a couple more times and realized it wasn’t glorifying cheating, lines like “my worst nightmare is me”. Back on the list! Real rollercoaster.

More troubling to me is how many romance movies have our protagonist stalk their love interest, who has already explicitly rejected them... and it works, because their obsession is framed as "love at first sight" and "not giving up on love".

Oh, and the other common trope, non-consensual voyeurism... and it works, because the woman is 'flattered' that the guy finds her attractive.

...How good is the "pop culture detective" YouTube channel?

Bothered me significantly in the will they/won't they dynamic of The Office.

The OG premise of The Office was similar to Seinfeld. They were all supposed to be awful people. Jim and Dwight and Michael were just three different flavors of incel. Jim hitting on a soon-to-be-married woman was supposed to be off-putting and gross. The front office guys treating the back office guys like trash was supposed to be elitist and revolting.
But because the writers needed to give you someone to root for, and because Jim was the "hot one" in a show full of normal looking people (aka the writers room from a bunch of sitcoms who thought it would be funny to have a show where they play each other's characters), they had to justify Pam breaking up and getting together with Jim. And then they had to turn the Jim/Pam arc into Friends. And then they had to turn the Dwight/Angela and Michael/Jan arcs into Friends. And by the final season they were just, like, "Fuck it, this show is now the same as Friends."
- But because the writers needed to give you someone to root for
  Moreover, because it went from adapting a British sitcom to making an American sitcom. The famous tweet goes something like: "A waiter spills soup on a businessman before a meeting with his boss. In the UK the show's about the waiter. In the US the show's about the businessman."
  Same reason Steve Carell went from playing David Brent to playing Brick Tamland. We don't find a powerful sleazebag as funny as a powerful moron.
  Not that there's much difference these days.

I don't mind infidelity in media when the one being cheated on is "evil" in some ways like they're abusive or not in love. Still icky though. It's just very different when it's something like that versus "I'm cheating because you're bad at sex."

So... 007?
It's usually "we have gotten bad at sex" and there's no conversation about it. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Talk about and figure it out. Then leave. Don't be a fucking dipshit about it.
- I don't view "we've gotten bad at sex" as evil, though it can be a symptom of "falling out of love." It just depends on the media in question and the story. Plus I can enjoy something even if I don't agree with the protagonist's actions.
  Edit: When I say "we've gotten bad at sex" not being evil I mean on part of the person being cheated on not the cheater. Being bad at sex doesn't make you evil and "deserve" to be cheated on.
I feel like the Righteous Gemstones - for a silly, flight of fancy / action movie-inspired series - depicted it pretty well.
Damaged people compelled to seek attention and solace without thinking of the consequences. Senseless, illogical, stupid, ill-considered, badly hidden, not even really what any of the people actually involved want.
- I don't specifically remember the infidelity in that series, but I do remember the characters. It's very much a "love to hate them" type show like Always Sunny is. Sure, they have genuine moments occasionally but mostly you're just enjoying watching them suffer and get into antics.

And also how often the movie is completely oblivious to that. For example it's been a while since I saw "Devil wears Prada" but if I remember right, the ending is:

Our main character has an argument with her boyfriend

Goes to a business trip in Paris

Sleeps with random guy

Returns home and makes up with her boyfriend

And the movie ends like nothing happened, she's happy, that's what's important

Her probably:
not betraying your partner's trust is important too. cheating is disgusting, selfish behaviour
They break up in the end.
European laws be kinky
i wish my wife would do this so that i can stick my asshole on fire
- wat

This makes me wonder how many women are quite unhappy in their marriage, and are willing to jump at the nearest opportunity.

Kinda depressing to think about, actually.

Boomer tropes exist because divorce was illegal.
You were expected to get married and stay married. You'd have unprotected sex with your high school boyfriend, you're goddamn right you were gonna keep the baby, and you were going to live together until one of you died. Even if it meant separate beds and not asking why he frequented that bar by the docks.
Blame Catholicism. That's usually a fair bet.
- When was divorce illegal?
  Edit: Divorce has never been illegal since the founding of the USA. It was uncommon, but it was granted by courts which means it was legal just uncommon.
Work with elderly. Coworker said "how many of these women do you think have gone their entire live without an orgasm." It connected a lot of dots. The no orgasm to elderly fox news white women is the school shooter pipeline for wasp women.
- Why are you making this very specifically racial? Most of the Fox News staff are not of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. You can just say white women.
While there are quite a few people who would jump ship from their marriage, that's not why the trope so popular. It's just that a lot of people like different forms of "forbidden love". Although most don't actually dream of doing those things, it's pure fantasy.
- Yeah, fictional romance is more interesting when it's forbidden in some way. Otherwise, who wants to read a romance novel about a nice couple who meets at the library when they're both single, and proceeds to have a wholesome relationship? Great for real life, but boring to read about or watch a movie about.
  Many of the traditional reasons for forbidding a romance are gone in the contemporary world. Different race, different social class, same gender, rival families? Not convincing.
  So you're left with stuff that's plausible but icky, like being in a relationship already, or being teacher/student or boss/employee. Or pornographic stuff like step-family. Those are problematic and people will criticize them.
  You could set your story in a historical setting in which the countess and the gardener are truly forbidden from passion, or a fantasy world where the ogopogos and sasquatches are sexy rivals.
  Or just have a lukewarm type of forbidden-ness, like "his family's greeting-card store is in competition with my family's greeting-card store" or "we're coworkers."
s/women/people/
"You know what would make this marriage better? Cheating!"
*people because it can be escapism for any person in a less ideal relationship.
Lots

Great romance requires a choice. It's difficult to find a choice that matters, ideally it is something they already have, but are giving up. That's why all the hallmark movies work because a big city girl is giving up her career to grow cucumbers or something. Making a choice to take a job somewhere else doesn't work because it's a future thing - giving up an opportunity is not the same as giving up a realized life situation. Infidelity really works because it's a former dream, and it means giving up stability, status, comfort for the unknown.

It works from a story perspective but it sends a very terrible message.
- It also doesn't help that it has some heritage from courtly romance, if youve ever wondered why Guinevere and Lancelot have a thing going on in Arthurian mythology that's why. The French were enamored with courtly romance and guess who helped forge modern romance.

Remember when the hottest song on the radio was Follow Me by Uncle Cracker?

_follow me
set me free
trust me and we will escape from this city_
Holy shit I just looked up the lyrics, I'm glad I was ignorant to them at the time
I'm not worried
'Bout the ring you wear
'Cause as long as no one knows
Then nobody can care
You're feelin' guilty
And I'm well aware
But you don't look ashamed
And baby I'm not scared
- On the other hand that is also one of those things that annoys me about romance culture, the whole notion of your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband being "stolen" by someone else as if your partner was just a passive object instead of being the actual person in the cheating who made promises to you (which might or might not include sexual exclusivity depending on mutually agreed upon preferences between everyone in the relationship) and should keep those promises or break up with you no matter what any third person tempts them with.

I saw Casablanca for the first time 2 weeks ago, and yep, checks out.

If I remember Casablanca right she doesn't actually knowingly cheat on her husband at any point. The woman has a relationship with Rick when she believes her husband to be dead before the events of the movie that we hear about 2nd hand. Then in the movie Rick helps her and her husband escape Casablanca.
- I guess there were no way for her to know her husband was alive or not, a real Schrödinger's spouse situation.
  And just to hammer it home that infidelity is wrong, I'm surprised the studio didn't go with an ending where Bogart got hit by that German and covered up that he was bleeding with that big trench coat, only to collapse after the plane had taken off. But I guess since it was a war movie it was bad for morale to have the "good guy" die.
- There is a scene with implied sex, when Ilsa goes back to try and convince Rick to give her the letters of transit.

And most of the time it is women cheating. I think it is because these movies are made mostly for women and it is like porn for them.

it is like porn for them.
You think that seeing other women cheat on their partners is like porn for women?
- Completely unrelated to the discussion, wanted to thank you for the pic. Literally choking down laughter hard so as not to wake the neighbors.
- Yes. Because everyone has thought about that one hot guy that they want to fuck (most won’t act on it).
  Same thing in porn for men is cheating porn.
  It is a turn on for a lot of people. Very few act on it.
You might be internalizing those movie scripts and your own lived experience. A cursory Google search indicates the opposite.
- What do you mean? I am saying what happens in the movies, the movies which mostly women watch. I didn’t say it was real.

Almost like it has to be interesting 🤔

Infidelity is widespread, because it comes from human nature. Instead of vilifying it we should strive to find and normalize forms of relationships that allow for more liberty without the necessity of lying and cheating.

What’s to stop anyone today from having an open conversation with their partner about opening their relationship? In the examples above, no one is vilifying having an open relationship… it’s vilifying lying and dishonesty.
Even if we were to normalize infidelity, that doesn’t mean anyone should be beholden to accepting it in their relationship. Your argument is akin to saying “lying is widespread because it comes from human nature” so we should just normalize lying.
F that noise.
- Healthy open relationships at scale will require some pretty big changes in society.
  Communication, critical thinking, self-actualization, Maslow's Hierarchy; all those things will have to be improved both in society-at-large and within the educational system. Most of the world will not function well in polyamory without basically redoing society.
- I mean the. Catholic church, patriarchy, most Major religions come to think of it.
Studies show that more open relationships do not decrease cheating, because the openness of the relationship is not the draw of cheating.
Your exact same argument could be made for murder, for sex crimes, for hate crimes, etc. Just because some people might occasionally want to commit these acts, does not make them okay, because they hurt people.
Open relationships already exist. There is no limit on what kind of relationship you can define with your partner, so there is absolutely no "necessity of lying and cheating". That is just an excuse for people who don't give a shit about hurting people.
- It sounds like the point they're making is more: "we internalize and understand relationship norms through serial monogamy, and maybe more people would benefit from reconsidering if that is what they want."
  Not: "You wanna cheat on your partner? Just do it lol."
- That's just not true. Open relationships do exist (I've seen several work out nicely) but the overall opinion on them in most cultures is they're weird, doomed or plain wrong and evil. Unless it is normalized that sex is not something fatal, it's ok among consenting adults, we won't move to a really sexually tolerant society.
You are 100% right, there is such thing as ethical non monogamy, and if people want to have a loving relationship and not be exclusive then we should normalize it. The comments here saying "next you'll say murder is ok because it's human nature" is the same type of shit people said when gay marriage was allowed. "Next we'll be saying it's natural to marry animals!" 🙄 It's all the slippery slope fallacy
Edit: I'm not saying that EVERY person should be non monogomous, and I'm not saying EVERY person is non monogomous for the right reasons. I'm saying it's a real relationship style that some people do for the right reasons and everyone is consenting, and it deserves to be normalized and respected.
- I think there's a big difference between fucking consenting adults while their partners are OK with it, and fucking children.
  I shouldn't have to spell that out but here we are.