Hi, I enrolled in a psychology class at Harvard called "The Psychology of Close Relationships" and wrote the following paper about the myth of the soul mate or perfect match that is perpetuated in the media and popular culture. Thought someone might take an interest in discussing. Here it is:
For the subject of this paper, I will discuss the movie Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, written by Director Richard Linklater and co-stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, to illustrate the cultural myth of the perfect match in romantic relationships. I will explain my views regarding the practical purpose of supporting this myth and the inevitable reality that our culture fails to support.
In the first film, a young man and woman, Jesse and Celine, randomly meet on a train from Budapest to Paris. Jesse is an American on his way to Vienna. Celine is en route to Paris. After an engaging conversation with Celine, Jesse proposes that she join him for a night in Vienna, under the notion (spoken) that they have a unique connection and the notion (unspoken) that they might be soul mates. They spend that night together and their enjoyment continues, but don’t meet again until nine years later in the second movie: Before Sunset. They are in Paris, where Jesse is promoting a book that he wrote about the night he spent with Celine in Vienna. Celine shows up at the event and they reconnect. At this point, Jesse is living in the U.S., unhappily married with a son, and the relationship with Celine blossoms. The soul mate concept comes to life for both of them. In the third film, Before Midnight, Jessie is divorced and living with Celine in Paris with their twin daughters. By this time, they are almost a decade into their relationship and experiencing the stressors of parenting, jealousy about careers and potential lovers, insecurities about physical attractiveness – the aspects of a long-term relationship that they expected to avoid. After all, they were soul mates.
The first two films perpetuate a myth that has been alive and well for centuries – that there is a soul mate for each of us. There is the possibility of a single someone who is right for us. If we find this partner, we will have a wonderful life, full of love, meaning and purpose. This kind of elusive love is a unique, mystical, unexplainable but lifelong condition that is resilient to all threats. It is perfect, and it exists as an ideal in the collective consciousness of our society. “This is why men and women put such impossible demands on each other in their relationships: We actually believe unconsciously that this mortal human being has the responsibility for making our lives whole, keeping us happy, making our lives meaningful, intense, and ecstatic!” (Johnson 1983) In addition to movies and songs, we have television shows where bachelors and bachelorettes participate to find their perfect match over a six-week period of highly choreographed courtship in which 25 prospects are narrowed down to one – the one. We have the promises of online matchmaking services with proven, proprietary techniques to help us stop wasting time with the bad apples and find the one true love meant for us.
I posit that these expectations are inhuman in their basis on perfection and this quality makes the whole concept of a perfect match a mythical one. Clinically, there is evidence of the ‘love is blind’ tendency for people to assume exaggerated ideals about their partners and the prospects for the success of their relationship (Garth 2010) , in short “…to perceive one’s partner as being more attractive than objective reality.”(Swami 2009) This is the romantic projection, the illusion, the idealization that Murray et al. found in their 1996 study, in which participant’s “…impressions of their partners were more a mirror of their self-images and ideals than a reflection of their partners’ self-reported attributes.”(Murray 1996) These impressions are influenced by self-image and also the tendency to interpret differences in a romantic partner in a way that the partner is perceived more positively than oneself. (Murray 1996) In effect, one partner is seeing the other as similar, except for the ways in which they are better. This is a subconscious strategy, to validate the notion that our partner has the unique potential to fulfill our needs, hopes and dreams and instill confidence in the prospects for the relationship. Despite the disconnection from reality, these expectations may play an important role in motivating individuals to pursue a partner in the extremely devoted, loving way that may be helpful for the beginning of a successful relationship. It is highly motivating to believe that we have found someone with such positive qualities that they can lift us higher. Who would be motivated to commit to a long term relationship with a partner if they were told that someday that partner will be revealed to them with flaws and shortcomings that balance their strengths and outstanding qualities? The projection, the myth, the illusion of the perfect match is actually good and in fact, romantic idealization was found to be associated with greater satisfaction in the relationship: “…both dating and married intimates were happier in their relationships when they idealized their partners…” (Murray 1996) . I can see the positive potential for perpetuating this myth of the perfect match and our culture offers innumerable examples to support it.
There is one scene in Before Sunrise, during the initial train ride, where Jesse, in an effort to validate his request that Celine join him in Vienna, says to her: “All right, all right, think of it like this. Jump ahead ten, twenty years, ok, and you’re married, but your marriage doesn’t have that same energy that it used to have. You know, you start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you’ve met in your life and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them instead of your husband. Well, I’m one of those guys. That’s me.” He is articulating a cultural prediction of what might happen if Celine ends up with someone other than her perfect match. Stuck in a dead relationship, wondering where it all went wrong and whether they married the wrong person. I propose that this inevitably happens when a bonded pair is together long enough that one or both begins to see beyond the initial projections of perfection that were motivating factors during that initial courtship. They begin to know each other more completely. The bias that filtered for the positive attributes we sought in a partner can evolve into an interdependence that reveals the ways our partners might not live up to the ideals and expectations we imposed upon them. No illusion is permanent. It eventually dissipates into disillusion. The projection is human after all.
What does one do when this happens? How do we love imperfection? Our popular culture offers no model for it. Compared to the cultural support for the perfect match, there are scant examples that resonate with the challenge of maintaining a relationship that is imperfect. Even though that imperfection is human. It is real but our culture doesn’t have the answers for that yet. Even the final movie of Linklater’s trilogy portrays this reality without offering any resolution. When we can see another for the complete person that they are, accept them and in so doing, love them completely, a new basis for the relationship has the potential to be born. One based on an imperfect, but honest, complete and human impression of the partner.
Perhaps it is captured in a quote from the Children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, as highlighted by Djikic and Oatley: “’Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens –to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’” (Williams 1922)
"myth" of the perfect match
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