The early 1990s featured stories of yuppie love, two young professionals who have fabulous professional lives and careers, all of whom are doing well financially. Our hero has a fantastic job in a professional architectural firm, but also our heroine’s life opens with a scene of the whole family financially well-off, festooned with piles of Christmas presents. 20 years ago, no-one was being laid off, unemployed not-by-choice, and no-one at the family occasions dinner tables avoided discussing their job because there had been nothing in the job market for over 2 years. Without it quite being the glittering shining bauble of the millionaires of Manhattan from earliest Hollywood talkies, classic movies from the late 1980s and 1990s featured an America filled with financially comfortable families and singles. Turner Classic Movies – TCM has embraced its identity to bring us classic films from every decade of cinema, not just cutting the films off at 1957.
Our hero, as played by Tom Hanks, has just been widowed as the movie opens on a cemetery in Chicago. Well meaning colleagues and relatives attempt to rush him to feel better and move on with his life, instead of giving the man some time to grieve the death of his wife from cancer. They encourage him to get out and meet new women. He gently retorts, “And in a few months, boom, I’ll be fine. I’ll just grow a new heart.” He thinks with a love like that, “It just doesn’t happen twice.”
Well, as one who’s been widowed at a young age, I can offer you genuine hope. Because, once you realize that you because you are so loving, it’s only natural that you will love again, then, you can.
18 months pass. Hanks and his young son have moved to a new city, Seattle. Again, as if that kind of a transition was super easy to do. To get a meaningfully compensating job is a snap, and finding a suitable home and setting up a supportive social circle takes only a few weeks, instead of years of relationship building. Hanks son thinks it’s time for his dad to start dating again. Waiting and grieving 18 months is actually a pretty good amount of time to give yourself to grieve and the process of grief.
So his son, takes matters into his own hands. 1993 and Online Dating didn’t even exist other than with early instant messaging services between the geek technologists. What’s a young boy to do to push his dad back out there? In the second decade of the 21st century, he’d take a few photos with his smart phone and post a profile at the widows dating site. 20 years ago, we had the daily talk shows and radio doctor psychologists to turn to which would profile a love seeking single as their Personals Ad Profile, and be the matchmaker go-between for suitors to mail in their missives and photos for the featured singles to choose among.
Our heroine, the star of so many late 80s and 1990s Nora Ephron Romantic Comedies, Meg Ryan, announces her engagement to yuppie hunkie husband material, Bill Pullman. She relates the story of how they met to her mom, “You make a million decisions that mean nothing, and then one day you order take out, and it changes your life.” But when her mother relates the story of meeting Ryan’s dad, and The Feeling she had, Ryan can tell, she hasn’t yet felt that feeling with Pullman.
On her drive to her future in-laws home, she tunes into late night syndicated talk radio, and hears from 8-year old Jonah’s Christmas Wish for his dad, Sam.
SiS not only features direct references to classic romantic weeper, “An Affair to Remember,” it harkens to romances of that era which depict love stories created by destiny and first glances. While SiS does hinge on a number of destiny interventions with Ryan’s profile letter being “accidentally” mailed by her girlfriend. There is still much in SiS to teach singles today.
The most important lesson is that illustrated by Ryan’s character. Many young women in the 30s feel such a desirous desperation to Get Married, that they almost feel like any man will do. Ryan’s character is, initially, settling. Not for a foibled imperfect man who is perfect for her, but instead, just the man who meets the husband criteria on paper and who actually asked her. She realizes, before she has already entangled herself with him legally, that she should not settle for less than that magical feeling of being in love.
I 100% agree. Indeed, marriage a real person, but not settle for less than real love.
And the lesson from Hanks’ Sam, is, yes, give yourself the emotional space to grieve. Then do take action to get yourself back out there. Also, when you have children, who you pair off with in your mate selection will impact them, too. Weave them in at some during your courtship.
The movie ends, not with a marriage proposal, but with the start to the phase of their connection when there will be relationship building in a dating courtship. Once you can make romance down-to-earth and integrated into daily life, then you make it real and sustainable. And isn’t that what we’re all looking for? A lifetime of love.
Happy Dating and Relationships,
April Braswell
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