That's just like...your opinion, man

I found this interesting little tidbit earlier today. It's mostly about whether or not women should wear make-up, but also has a bit in it about how people are allowed divergent opinions on things. Which is an interesting mindset.

I sometimes have difficulty with this - the idea that people are entitled to their opinions. It's easy enough when I run into somebody who has different taste in things like media ("Oh, you think 2 Fast 2 Furious was the best movie of all time? That's...different."), but when I encounter people and they're talking about their relationships, it can be difficult sometimes to keep my inner judgement monologue in check.

 
(Also, just for reference, I fucking hate The Breakfast Club, but that's a good gif.)

It's not, "grr why won't you realize the obvious superiority of my relationship format?"

 
It's more...I tend to encounter people who talk about their relationships and are genuinely unhappy about them or in some other way just making shitty generalizations about them. These come in the format where they'll say something they don't like about their relationship, and then just sort of give me a shrug like, "well, what do you expect?" It took me a long time to get used to this - being raised with parents where everything was a problem in their relationship, it was difficult to parse out what exactly was an issue worth throwing away a relationship for, and what was just sort of a minor difference in the way people approach things. Now that I do know the difference a bit better, though, it's even more difficult to listen to people complain about their relationships in the prior sense and not just be...

Very few people come up to me and want to talk about how they went to see a movie or read an entire book but they just didn't really understand the purpose behind the whole thing. People frequently, though, talk about their relationships as though the relationship is this confusing alternate universe where things just don't make sense. Like, they wanted to be in a relationship, right? That's what everyone around them in relationships told them. They saw relationships from the outside and they looked all shiny and awesome, but now that they're in one it just doesn't quite seem as awesome. But it's better than being alone, right? RIGHT?

I had a fantastic Deadjournal entry (yeah, Deadjournal. Want to fight about it?) about this at one point in high school when everybody was freaking out about finding somebody to be in a relationship with. The notion that you just can't be single - that's fucking terrible. Even more terrible is to communicate your actual desires once you're actually in a relationship. Because then the other person might not be into the same things, and you'll wind up single again. It's another one of the inherent dangers when the world is portrayed as nothing but an opportunity for monogamous pair-bonding.

Note: I used a lot of italics in this particular entry. I'm not sure why. I just liked slanty writing, apparently. Or for some reason this entry necessitated more emphasis. Who knows.

Also note: I watched Pitch Perfect tonight. It had a main plot point of the romance story be The Breakfast Club, which made me vomit with rage.

It also had one of those leading man characters who is just fucking adorably perfect the entire time until you want to fucking punch him in the teeth.

 
Like...you could make a drinking game out of how many times he just looks at the main lady character sort of like, "I appreciate your alternative nature."

You'd be fucking plastered by the half hour mark of the movie.