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The Trouble With Love Songs

Quit Ruining My Life!

Hey, listen, I like Coldplay as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is my friend Rick, who actually owns Coldplay coasters). On any Coldplay CD, there are always three or so songs I really like, which is more than I can say for an Avril Levigne, for example, or a Hinder.¹

Nonetheless, Coldplay causes me a little trouble — even if they "never meant to" — because they, slightly more than other alt-rock-sort-of bands, sing a lot about a certain kind of love. Exhibit A, the lyrics from "Fix You":

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

It's a great song, one of my favorites of Coldplay's and in general. But I'm beginning to think this song is setting me up to want something that might not really exist. And it's ruining my life.

Do you hear that, Chris Martin? Ruining my life. You. You and Gwyneth Paltrow and your criminally cute child.

A Matter of Expectations

I get it that Martin isn't writing any kind of a dissertation on healthy relationships. He's merely expressing something, and that's fine. Only it's not fine, because this song plays into this desire that a lot of us seem to have, a desire for a relationship that infuses our entire life stories with all kinds of meaning on all kinds of levels. In other words, we want great love. We want a love that fixes us.

Coldplay isn't even as prolific an offender as a certain genre of film. You know what I'm talking about: those movies that set up a craving for perfect love. I want Matthew McConaughey to kneel next to me at his parents' house in Staten Island and stroke my hair. I want John Cusack to play Peter Gabriel songs on a boombox in front of my house.

The problem is that I'm pretty sure these movies and, perhaps to a lesser extent, songs like "Fix You," are completely unrealistic.

Now, I feel the need to be up front about something: I am admittedly a certifiable cynic when it comes to l'amour. I 100 percent (well, maybe 95) expect to be married to someone who will decide that I am ugly and fat exactly 14 minutes after "I do," and what follows will be an unending stream of meaningless conversations and general banality interrupted only by the sweet kiss of death.

I know, I know: I'm being a little unreasonable. We could put me on the couch and analyze me all day (seriously, there's plenty of material²), but a big part of the problem is that when I look at all the women I know who have been divorced rather against their will, I can't help but notice that I'm not any better than any of them. Nerdy? I am so totally nerdy. Annoying? Got that one covered too. Physically imperfect? Let's just not even talk about it.

One of my very favorite people was left by her husband when she was five months pregnant; she is beautiful and smart and fun. I have nothing on her. I have no reason to believe that I'm less likely to be left — or worse, just unloved — than anyone else.

Um, anyway. The point is that as much as I want a film-worthy love story, I'm a weensy bit jaded. And in light of the disparity between my hopes and my expectations, I consider myself something of an agnostic about what I can and should expect from relationships. So mine may not be the most objective opinion when it comes to love and movies. Just so you know.

Godsends — Maybe

One question we might ask as we explore the vicissitudes of love and expectations is: Does God want us to have a fantastically meaningful love story? The answer, I feel, is a resounding: maybe.

We've been taught — rightly, I think — not to put our whole hope and faith in any romantic relationship, to look to God as the provider of all our needs. But is it possible that God could use a relationship to undo a hurt or teach us to trust? I don't think I can rule it out. My priest often says that people hurt us, and people heal us. It seems possible that one of those people who heal us could be someone with whom we're romantically involved.

Of course, relationships are complicated. It seems like a bad idea to expect a relationship to be wholly healing with no snags or difficulties. And it also seems like a bad idea to rush into romantic entanglements hoping they will fix us. I'm hesitant to say unequivocally that God always works in our lives through certain means, only that He's always at work in our lives.

Cuidado: Peligro

I think we all know there are pitfalls to having a chick-flick view of love and marriage. We all recognize, even if only in a peripheral kind of way, that if we go into a marriage with stars in our eyes, we'll be disappointed.

There are other pitfalls besides disappointment. There's the stalling phenomenon, in which we're so intent on the white-knight ideal that we miss what's right in front of us. We don't love the one we're with because we're thinking about the one we want. Conversely, I think sometimes our idealization of love ends up causing us to settle. We want John Cusack, but we know he doesn't really exist the way he does on screen. So we turn our attention to Mr. Right Now, even if he's not quite right for us.

Quite honestly, these mixed-up couples seem to comprise the majority. I know at least a few girls who are waiting around for their guys to show some sign of full commitment, which wouldn't be so bad except that pretty much everyone seems to think these guys aren't quite worthy. They're the bad boy or even the patron (ick), but they're not the loving husband.

But even a cynic like me can't deny that there are some great relationships out there. I have another couple of friends who took a while to get together, but once they started dating, they were engaged within a year. Theirs doesn't seem to be a save-me relationship, but it does seem stable and loving, like it has the potential to be loving come hell or high water. I think that's what we all want, and I think it's the thing we're having a hard time trying to find.

Getting to the Root

As trite and shallow as it can be, I think there might be something deeply truthful about chick-flick love. Romantic comedies obviously reflect something we profoundly want. Why else would we fork over our hard-earned cash for recycled plots and mediocre jokes?

Maybe our love of chick flicks is yet another sign that we were made to be communal. We don't want to trudge through our days in a purely pragmatic relationship; we want a rich connection. We also want redemption — we want our wounds and weirdnesses to be accepted, healed, and loved. And why shouldn't we? God Himself is communal, and God Himself waits to redeem and restore us.

John wrote to his followers, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. … No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us" (1 John 4:10, 12, NIV).

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What do you think is the right balance between the "perfect" romance and reality?

Join the discussion!

I, the cynic, am feeling a little optimistic today. There is great love in the world — the greatest, really. And if I can find a way to be a better study of this love, I think I might just find a love story better than any ever seen on a movie screen.