The Romantic Comedy has always been my favorite genre of movies. I think it's safe to say that this has hindered me ultimately in my life's quest to find that man for me. The ideal man. The man who will walk to the ends of the Earth and back for me; who'll jump over the moon or dive deep into an icy ocean. The man who will do just about anything to ensure my happiness. Now, maybe it's just me. Or maybe the movies have disillusioned, (brainwashed really), my mind; perhaps, common sense is dead in a certain part of my brain.

The thing is, my boyfriend is not that man in the movies. In a romantic comedy, no matter what, no matter how screwed up a guy can be, ultimately, he comes through in the end. He goes that extra mile to buy that one-of-a-kind silver and jade bracelet you can only find 60 countries away, or he cooks you that amazing meal after a big fight and wins you back with all the right things to say. At the end of a romantic comedy, the hero appears. He is that mumbling, fumbling screw up of a twenty-something-year-old male who gets it right in the end.

Now, what I want to know is, do I have to wait 'til the end of my love story for my man to become my hero? Though, that is not to say he isn't.

But when you spend much of your young life drinking in every romantic movie you can possibly find, (and intentionally blocking out the ones that end tragically from your mind), it is kind of hard not to build up an image of a man who, in some way, acts and behaves as the heroes in romantic movies do. It's as if we are all mentally storing actions and lines from these kinds of films-to all of which future actions and words spoken to us in real life will be measured. And from this we develop impossible standards we wish our own men could live by. And when they don't, well, they're just bad boyfriends.

At least, that has been my mentality in retrospect. I've spent so much time watching these movies, and believing the "reality" of a character, not questioning a mean-spirited man's actions, because somehow his forgiveness speech compensates for it, and then, when my own boyfriend acts like a jerk, I expect a similar sappy testament. But, my conscience has grown so sick of my subconscious expecting some sort of award for myself simply for being a girlfriend whose boyfriend behaves like an idiot every other month or so. Because that only leads to self-pity, and when you start pitying yourself, you start wallowing, and then you begin to think about, "oh

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