A recent examination of romantic comedies in my gender studies class has led me to question two things: why Hugh Grant isn’t in more of them, and why there is always the reinforcement of the “one true love” trope. Naturally, our class analysis went deeper than questioning Hugh Grant’s presence, but I was caught on the idea of having one true love.
Admittedly, I have never been in love. I do not know what it’s like to love one person, let alone what it’s like to know you want to spend the rest of your life with someone. I can imagine a decision like that is based off of more than just music taste and a coffee order. I have never been swept off my feet and I have never ridden off into the sunset with the only man I am destined to spend the rest of eternity with. Not that either one of these things are the basis of love, but I know they look good in romantic comedies.
The theory of having one true love has muddled roots, but it can certainly be found in popular culture within the movies and television shows we watch. One true love means that there is only one person on this Earth you were destined to be with, and you will never be whole until you met this person. Following this logic, what happens to us if we never meet this person? Have we failed our quest on Earth if we never meet “the one?” Will we never be whole until we find our other half?
The rhetoric of having one true love dates back to the times of ancient Greece, most notably found in Plato’s “Symposium.” In those times, it was thought that people were born in pairs that Zeus then split apart, forever casting these halves into a world of ambiguity, confusion and identity crisis until they found their other half.
It is a nice sentiment to consider, that there is someone who fits with you so perfectly that they are your other half. In reality, this is not a thought I can agree with. People are not halves. It is dangerous rhetoric that we value ourselves on the fulfillment of others and consider ourselves less than whole without them.
Why do we limit ourselves to the belief that there is only one person out in the world that we are destined to be with? There are more than seven billion people roaming the Earth at any point in time. We pass them on the street, awkwardly stare at them on the T and accidentally hit them with our umbrellas when it rains. We are constantly meeting people, whether we intend to or not.
This is not to say that the boy in your statistics class is going to be your next beau, but sometimes, life can be funny like that. We, as college-aged millennials, are so young. We meet people, we make friends, we make mistakes. We are learning and growing every single day, starting and ending relationships in the same cycle as we start and end a Netflix show. There is enough pressure in our society to make the world better than how those who came before us left it, that we should not be concerned with searching for our other halves. We should be striving to make better wholes.
If there is such a thing as one true love and all the romantic comedies prove to be true, then I resolve to have myself be my one true love. If there truly is one person we are destined to love, shouldn’t it be ourselves? Shouldn’t we dedicate time and love to ourselves first before traversing the world to find “the one?”
We are the one person we spend the most time with. Shouldn’t we fall head over heels for ourselves? I want to be surprised, amazed, enchanted by the things I can do. I want to devote the truest love I can have to myself and then share it with someone who can tolerate my corny jokes and even cornier tacos.
I am not a half. I am a whole. I resolve to love myself wholly and share that love with whomever I choose.
Meredith loves telling stories and pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, minus the man and comfy NYC apartment. She, however, eats enough brunch to cover all six seasons. When she's not drowning in 16th-century literature, she can be found lamenting over the bad grammar and bad boys in her middle school diary.
Find her on twitter @merewilsh or email her mwilsher@bu.edu with all your love musings or questions.
