ONTD

4 Real-Life Love Lessons Learned From Our 4 Favorite Fictional Men
By Neha Gandhi

If I’m totally honest, some of my earliest understandings of love and relationships came from men who were not real. I fell harder than most other little girls — you could say my inner life was…rich — for the boys and men I got to know through books, movies, and TV. Unlike any guys I would ever meet in real life, these characters would routinely sweep my protagonists off their feet, or sometimes, just quietly pine for them, winning them over by sheer force of being pathetic (the first time I was able to qualify this: the moment when I rejoiced because Duckie didn't get the girl at the end of Pretty in Pink).

Rereading and rewatching these stories formed most of my ideas of how men and women should get along, and what I ought to be looking for in a perfect guy (because even the most flawed men somehow seemed perfect, by the end of a lot of these works of fiction).

Many of those lessons were flat-out wrong, but some of them were spot-on. If you ask me, thinking about the Jordan Catalanos and Dylan McKays of the world — not represented here, but honorable mentions for sure — helped me understand some of the most screwed-up things about what I thought I wanted, when it came to falling in love, and all of the steps leading up to it.

In college, my friends, who knew about my unhealthy attachments to fictional men, used to find endless entertainment in asking me to play f*ck, marry, kill with my four favorites (you have to kill two, in this scenario; so cruel): Theodore Lawrence, Pacey Witter, Rhett Butler, and Steff (from Pretty in Pink, but as far as I can tell, he had no last name). I loved them all so much back then, I could never choose, and the question basically threw me into a tailspin every time. Since then, I’ve figured a few things out though....





The Knight In Shining Armor: Pacey Witter, Dawson’s Creek

When Dawson’s Creek found its way into syndication on TBS in the mornings, I was a junior in college. I’d watched most of the show faithfully when it aired in real time (taping it on VHS when I had swim practice in the evenings), but I skipped quite a few classes, and become newly obsessed with the drama, in that two-hour block, on weekday mornings.

And when Pacey fell for his friend Joey, I fell hard, for him. Everything about his story (plus the surface level kinship I felt to Joey Potter) felt so dramatic and difficult at the time.

Sure, I was old enough to see that Pacey had a hero complex (subtlety was hardly the show’s forte), but was it so bad that he cared so much? I didn’t think so. And while that particular brand of underachieving charm doesn’t really work on me anymore, I can’t pretend I’m not attracted to the guys who are willing to openly admit to their feelings early on, and persist through any indifference on my part. Pacey, unfortunately, may have given me the impression that it was okay to waffle and be unsure and wait for a guy to fight for my attention and affection. And even today, that’s a lesson I have to work on unlearning.

Being wooed is great, but you’ve gotta give something back, and Joey Potter so rarely did. And the guys always hung around and waited. But in reality, the guy who pines for you for years and hangs around forever, waiting for you, is never the guy who wins your respect.



The Asshole: Steff, Pretty in Pink

This guy had pretty much zero redeeming qualities. He’s a self-loathing dick who’s a terrible friend to Blane, and verbally abusive toward his girlfriend. And his behavior toward Andie is hateful in a dark and malicious way that feels like total sociopath behavior. But somehow, I found his swagger so charming, both as a kid, and since we’re being honest, even now, on some level.

There’s something about the idea of the smoldering, confident guy secretly pining for our heroine that sets so many girls up to fail. The attraction to assholes is sometimes innate, but the idea that maybe, just maybe, if you gave him a shot, that guy could change for you, makes it all so much worse. Fortunately, I’ve never been the girl to date the dickiest guy in the room. And I kinda think that seeing my own attraction to Steff and not ever totally understanding it fired the initial warning shot that always kept me away.



The Best Friend: Laurie, Little Women

Theodore Laurence was my first love, and even to this day, I can’t read the scene where Jo rejects his proposal (see above — doesn't it look heart-wrenching?), without tearing up, and having to put the book down. As a child, all I wanted was a wonderful, kind-hearted but boldly mischievous friend (yeah, it’s a recurring theme for me, and I’m guessing, more than a few of you, too) who incorporated himself into my family and then grew up to want to marry me.

And I can’t really say that all that much has changed today. I’ve since taken a few lit classes that call Laurie out for being emasculated and also a peeper. I’ve sat through countless discussions about the male/female dynamic of Jo, with her larger-than-life ambitions and male nickname, and Laurie, with his female nickname and meandering sense of purpose. I get it. I really do. But all of that has done very little to temper my love for the boy who gives his love so wholeheartedly. Have I maybe crushed on a few guys who turned out to be gay, over the years? Yes. Can I blame that on Laurie? If I’m a little bit delusional, probably. But that’s hardly all that Little Women taught me.

Laurie, from a very early age, showed me that the best kind of love was the kind that sprung from friendship. I may have tried to turn a few ill-advised friendships into relationships over the years, as a result, but as far as fictional men go, Laurie’s done me almost no harm, and has encouraged me to date some of the guys who’ve made for the very best boyfriends, period.



The Rogue: Rhett Butler, Gone with the Wind

Full disclosure: I’ve loved GWTW from a very early age. I have three copies of the book at home. One that’s tattered with all of my margin notes, one that’s a decent paperback version, for actual reading, and one that’s a leatherbound early edition, which looks very lovely on my bookshelf. All of that is meant to preface the fact that I’ve spent a lot of my life pining for Rhett Butler.

There’s something very masculine and decisive, but also manipulative about him, and that’s all very appealing to me. But there’s also something very stand-up about him. He’s a man who lives by his own moral code but also can’t shake himself of the ties that bind (his fondness for Melly, his eleventh-hour enlistment in the Confederate army, his return to Charleston, all of these things suggest it). And that’s what breaks my heart at the end of the book when he leaves Scarlett.

To me, Rhett has become a very complicated reference point for what a man should be, but at his very core, he represents a brash man who’s willing to go to the ends of the earth to make a woman love him. He lives by his own rules without ever really crossing the line (depending on where you draw the line), and he personifies the idea of the rogue who will come into your life to sweep you off your feet. But if you read closely, he also reveals himself to be a man who (arguably) rapes the woman he loves, and walks out on her when she finally comes to love him in a meaningful way. And that’s not an ideal foundation for anything.

In recent years, I think I’ve come to realize that in a game of f*ck, marry, kill, I’d probably f*ck Pacey, marry Laurie, and kill the other two, but to be totally honest, that’s my answer in a bubble. Confronted with the realities of what these archetypes actually represent, I still make the wrong choices a lot of the time, but at least now, I know that I’m doing it. Progress, right?



SOURCE

Thoughts? Who are your fictional crushes, ONTD?