5 Secret Explanations Behind Rom-Coms’ Baffling Tropes

5 The Lover Who Can’t Say ‘I Love You’

The couple we’ve been following are sharing a close moment, and one of them says, “I love you.” The other panics. “And I... really have to go now!” they say and sprint out of the room, as we laugh. They aren’t ready for that kind of step, you see. At least not until the end of the episode, when they do manage to say those words, and we all applaud. 

Okay, But: The characters do love each other, of course. They will be engaged by the end of this season and married by the end of the next. Even before all that, it’s clear they love each other, with a level of codependence that leaves real-life couples saying, “Hey, maybe cultivate some outside interests; this isn’t healthy.” And yet, these are the characters who spat over whether to exchange I love you’s.

Here’s What’s Really Going On: The show will put together some explanation for the character’s reticence, something about fear of commitment or not being demonstrative. But the thing to keep in mind is that “not wanting to say I-love-you back” is something real couples might experience — except, in real-life, it’s because one person really does not love the other. They’re dating, but one of them isn’t as serious about it, and the new discovery of this difference creates justified tension. 

The writer perhaps experienced this themselves, inspiring them to put it in the story. But rather than burden us with that sad situation, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the person who refuses to say those words actually does love you, and the only thing holding them back is their own insecurities? 

The alternative, “he’s just not into you,” doesn’t make for a very fun story.

I mean, yeah, there was a romantic comedy literally named He’s Just Not Into You, and it was wildly successful. But not one of its many storylines actually ended with a character not being that into the other. 

4 Turned On by a Childhood Bedroom

Our characters, for some reason that makes sense in the moment, take a trip to one character’s childhood home. On visiting her room, the other character suddenly gets very excited. “Well, well, well!” they say. “So, this is the room where teenage Vanessa spent all her time! I wonder just what sort of dirty stuff she got up to in here!”

Okay, But: Hey, visitor to this house — you know what’s a more exciting room to think about this character in? Any other room you’ve seen her in, since she’s now a sexually active adult. In fact, perhaps you yourself have had sex with her in several of those rooms. You may even have been to her actual bedroom in her current home. Why would this room plastered with posters of boy bands from two decades ago arouse you?

Also, why has no one taken those posters down, in all these years? The parents keep coming to the room to dust but haven’t got around to redecorating? 

Here’s What’s Really Going On: One obvious explanation is that Hollywood is run by sex criminals who are much more attracted to teenagers than to adults. But I don’t think that’s the real answer.

Instead, the writer of this scene approaches it as a writer. That means, instead of the way people think about each other’s childhoods, they’re thinking about teen dramas. In a teen drama, the characters have no careers, no children of their own and no fears of mortality. All they have are their social lives, and that means sex, sex, sex. Never mind that adults also have sex, more sex — adults have other stuff going on as well, and this writer invents new situations for them every week, but they’re thinking of the teen in a more disconnected way. 

Of course, these hypothetical teens would be played by 20-somethings who are also professional models. If you go up to this writer who penned the scene and show them a pic of an actual 15-year-old, they’ll say, “Wait. My character wasn’t fantasizing about THEM experimenting sexually. Get that photo out of here.” 

3 The Horror of Getting Hit on at a Bar

A woman is at a bar, and a stranger comes up and introduces himself. She tries to brush him off because she wasn’t here to get picked up. She just wants to drink. The guy persists, perhaps aggressively. Luckily, a second stranger comes by and intervenes, and she hits it off with this new guy.

The second stranger will probably be Will Smith. Besides Hitch above, something like this also happened in the Will Smith movie Focus — where a twist reveals the woman wasn’t being hit on at all but is running a con, but the fact that it’s a twist means we consider the original setup a typical situation. 

Okay, But: Bars are fine places to hang out with someone. If you arrive alone, many are also fine places to hang out with strangers. But if you’re alone and wish to stay alone, a bar is a poor choice for how to spend an evening. The alcohol costs much more than drinking at home, and finishing your glass takes just a few minutes if you’re not talking to someone, after which you do what exactly? Buy another drink, I guess, but that won’t take long to finish either.

I’ve talked about this with a few people, and people online say I’m wrong and that drinking alone in a bar and wanting to be left alone is very normal. Everyone I’ve talked to in person says, no, those online people are lying, or at least are unusual, and if you order a drink alone in a bar, that means you’re open to meeting people while there.

All of this is to say that if someone is drinking alone at a bar, they probably don’t consider being hit on such a terrible prospect. Oh, the specific asshole who hits on you may be a terrible prospect, but a movie will instead assure us that the lone drinker doesn’t want to be accosted by anyone at all — until Will Smith shows up, and gives them what they never realized they wanted.

Here’s What’s Really Going On: There are plenty of settings where you really don’t want to be hit on by anyone, period. Maybe it’s the gym, or maybe it’s when you’re serving customers (or maybe it’s not — everyone’s got their own rules). The movie is counting on you applying that discomfort to this scene. Only, they don’t want to set the scene in any of those places where all advances really are unwelcome because they want Will Smith’s eventual arrival to feel romantic.

Oh, and the movie can’t simply have the first suitor be unattractive and the second be Will Smith, in which case the interaction would make sense just fine. They need to have to first one be predatory, so the second can feel chivalrous. Considering how much of dating involves turning people down, rom-coms can be reluctant to portray routine rejection as fine. For another example of that...

2 Lying to Get Out of a Date Is Wrong

Someone asks a character out, and this character gets out of it by claiming to be sick. Later, they do go out (with someone else), and what do you know — the jilted suitor spots them. 

This plot is more common in stories about kids, and it’s supposed to teach a moral about honesty. “You should have just told the truth about not wanting to go out with them!”

Okay, But: True, in that situation, honesty would have spared them that later awkwardness. And you don’t need an excuse to turn someone down: Not wanting to go out with them is all the reason you need. But it’s standard and even polite to invent an excuse. “I’m busy” is fine, even if you’re not, as is “I’m not feeling well,” even if you are. 

The real moral here should be the jilted guy learning that “I can’t make it” means “I don’t want to make it,” and they're expected to understand that. They shouldn’t resent this because the excuse wasn’t so much a lie as a courtesy. 

Here’s What’s Really Going On: The writer was that jilted guy. He’s still bitter and wants to portray whoever turned him down as a villain with a lesson to learn.

1 The Third-Act Misunderstanding

Late into the movie, our couple breaks up. One character overhears something out-of-context and becomes convinced the other is a terrible person, is cheating or is a terrible person who cheats. For one example of this, let’s look at 2001’s Shallow Hal.

Hal has been hypnotized to see people’s inner beauty, which makes various people look completely different to him than they really do. He meets and dates Rosemary during this time, and when the hypnosis lifts, he avoids her for fear that he won’t be attracted to the real her. Right before the end of the movie, he’s changed his mind, but Rosemary’s now unwilling to meet him — and it’s not because she’s mad about the hypnosis thing. In fact, the movie will end without her ever learning about that.

Instead, she seemingly catches Hal on a date with another woman. It’s not really a date; he turned this woman down, they went out as friends and Rosemary catches sight of them during a few seconds that merely look intimate. Then Hal gets up and bumps into Rosemary. He says, “Hello,” in a friendly but vague manner and walks past because he has no idea this is her. 

To her, that’s a crushing betrayal, of course, but in reality, he genuinely didn’t recognize her. He then phones her, speaking as though the encounter immediately prior didn’t happen. To her, that’s psychotic, but (again) he’s not really doing anything wrong.

Okay, But: There are always legitimate reasons for a fictional couple to break up, if a writer wants them to. How silly then that when the couple really does break up, it’s for assuming fault where none exists.

Everyone has flaws, and with movie characters, their flaw is often the story’s premise. In Shallow Hal, Hal is shallow. Hal, no longer under hypnosis and seeing Rosemary without recognizing her, could say something terrible that reveals what he thinks about people who look like her. Or, he could say that about someone who’s not Rosemary, but she still hears it and understands this reveals something about him. 

Here’s What’s Really Going On: The character overcomes their flaw over the course of the movie. But the climax, for which the writer has decided the couple must temporarily split, happens well after the middle of the movie. So, they can’t break up over anyone’s real flaws, as the movie has already moved past those.

Many movies handle this by having someone find out something from earlier in the movie that no longer reflects on the other character. The relationship began on a lie, for example. The other way of handling it is the misunderstanding. With all flaws resolved (Hal is no longer shallow late into the movie, even with the hypnosis gone), they break up over something that isn’t a real issue because no time for resolving real issues remains. 

With Shallow Hal, this all ends with a final scene in which Rosemary takes Hal back despite not only never learning about the hypnosis — she never receives or requests any explanation for the dinner incident, the very reason she dropped him. It doesn’t make sense, but it feels right because we don’t need him to explain that, as we know he wasn’t at fault there. All we need is proof he’s over his original shallowness, even though that shallowness wasn’t why they broke up. And we get that proof, both when he finally sees Rosemary and discovers he really is attracted to her and when he earlier decides he’ll pursue her no matter what she looks like (resulting in mistakenly making out with the housekeeper).

We urge you to apply this to your own relationship. The day before Valentine’s Day, manufacture some mix-up, implying some error on your part that you never actually committed. Then, when the big day comes, allow the truth to become known, and laugh over how there was never really any reason to fight. Because wouldn’t it be great if it were all just wacky misunderstandings, and real conflict didn’t exist? 

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