Most Couples Are Doomed

[SmidgenofaPigeon]

I mean in film and TV and literature .

Often at the end of a film depicting a great love story I just think...nah....two years max.

Examples:
Rose and Jack if he hadn’t frozen to death. Would she REALLY have been content with a future cut off from society and spitting and ice-fishing her way round America? No.

Satine and Christian from Moulin Rouge. I know she’s dead (and died very beautifully and romantically from TB too) but if they’d had to leave Paris, rattling through Europe dragging a bird cage, it would be no time at all before she realised there’s no freedom in being dirt poor while Christian writes his book, she’d go back to her tried and tested ways in no time to make a few bob, he’d get jealous and she’d piss off to join a chorus line in London, not as the sparking diamond but a cubic zirconia near the back.

Film Harry and Ginny- he’d realise all those years of playing the field as the chosen one was a missed chance, and he’d move out to his own flat where he’d show off his new Nike AirMax to his bewildered children and boast about crazy nights out in the local bar. Ginny would sniff stoically in a beige trench coat and hold it together for the kids.

I’m sure there are loads more.

[ScarfaceCwaw]

She could have sold that diamond and given her mother a decent life

Well, not really, insurance paid out on the diamond, so if it had ever surfaced they would have reclaimed it and Rose would have been in the shit. Illicitly is the only way it could have been sold, and Mrs DeWitt Bukater was dead set on Rose marrying Cal and probably wouldn't have accepted anything else. Once they'd liquidated their assets there probably still would have been enough for her to live, just not in the style she was accustomed to. Cal might even have taken care of her to save face given that she was his nearly-MIL and Rose had apparently copped it.

I have now officially given James Cameron too many of my braincells today.

[TaraR2020]

@hockeysticks89

I thought TBBT was an awful ending - you can't be happy unless you have a baby, and Penny came round to the idea and was happy 'cos that's what women really want, secretly. Lazy, predictable writing.

Nessa and Smithy? No, he thought he could do better than her. He'd always look down on her a bit (wrongly so)

@hockeysticks89 completely agree with you about TBBT, especially when you see how Bernandette and Howard turned out, she was so anti children and then suddenly fell pregnant and had a complete about face.

The Rose & Jack door thing is so tired now...I caught the end bits of Titanic on TV a while ago and they did try to share the door, but it wasn't stable enough to allow Jack to get on it.

I think they'd have been ok if he'd had lived though.

[the80sweregreat]

I can't see Nessa and Smithy as a married couple . She is too feisty for him ; he would prefer a proper housewife ' dinner on the table ' sort. She just isn't like that at all.!
I think being friends and bringing up their boy together was the ideal situation, but living apart.

Children in need did a look back to the love actually crew years ago. Natalie and David stayed together! The young lad married his American g/ f I think ? Can't remember anyone else though ( was a while ago)

[randomlyLostInWales]

Besides she was really cruel to her mother. At the start of the film mum makes it clear there’s debts and their stuff will get sold Rose survived the titanic and clearly ditched her mum to a life of poverty -nasty She could have sold that diamond and given her mother a decent life

She could have stood up to her Mother and said no to marriage rather than let her think she was dead at very least even if she couldn't use the diamond.

I think she was looking out for herself from that point on - hence I think the late marriage on her terms to some guy utterly in love with her and enough money to give her opportunities while if Jack has lived she'd have been raising children in poverty most probably alone.

[merryhouse]

@TatianaBis

I've never actually managed to watch more than the first 10 mins of Titanic.

Why?

I mean, I'm not claiming it's great or anything, but it's just yer basic period drama at the beginning.

Are you allergic to flat caps, or something?

[ladycarlotta]

Nah, there's posh person 'debts' and there's normal person 'debts': Rose's mother would have been fine. Her rich mates would have rallied round and she'd probably get a pension by public prescription or something. It's all good.

[TatianaBis]

I mean, I'm not claiming it's great or anything, but it's just yer basic period drama at the beginning.

Dunno. Just toe-curlingly shite.

[GreenSlide]

@theluckiest

Can I just point out that David and Patrick in Schitts Creek will be together forever as they are the most in love on-screen couple ever...

And Alexis will forge a fabulous career in New York but will end up with Ted.
Eventually.

Harry & Sally will drive one another to distraction but will stay together.

Harry Potter is too damaged & self-absorbed for a long term relationship. He will eventually go off the rails, have a massive mid-life crisis and Ginny will have had enough & chuck him out. Or LTB.

All the Harry Potter children are bound to be extremely traumatised by what they went through at school. A whole generation of magical kids with PTSD

[Latenightreader]

Lyra and Will in His Dark Materials. I just couldn’t get invested in them as a great romantic couple torn apart. 20 years since I read it and I remember rolling my eyes at the bit where they talk about how they could have had children who belonged to both worlds...

[ProfessionalWeirdo]

Romeo and Juliet - totally dysfunctional - would have lasted a week without the drama.

(TBF they lasted about a week with the drama)

Less than that, in fact. They met on a Sunday evening, married on Monday afternoon, and were both dead by dawn on Thursday.

[Dinkydody]

Andie would of quickly relished that nobody would love her like Ducky and she would dump Blaine ( Pretty in Pink)

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

I've just watched Easter Parade, the 1948 Fred Astaire and Judy Garland film. Loved the dancing, but omg 'Hannah', stop deferring to him! I give them two years before she stops humouring this controlling man and dances out on him.

And totally agree about Carrie and Mr Big. How any ways can he humiliate her and let her down before she sees the light.

[Seventrees]

Watch the musical "Into the Woods", which is basically about this. Act 1 ends with the Happy Ever After fairytale endings. At the beginning of Act 2, the prince who married Cinderella is bored and looking for an affair. The prince who married Rapunzel realises that she's got major mental health problems due to her terrible childhood.

[the80sweregreat]

Even JKR wishes she hadn't put Ron and Hermoine together. It was wrong.
I doubt they would have stayed together anyway. A quick magical divorce.

[TheThermalStair]

I could weep at Hermione and Ron. Love the idea of her finding herself a nice Ravenclaw girl, they could play very competitive games of banagrams and play classical duets in between fighting dark forces.

[NeverDropYourMoonCup]

@SmidgenofaPigeon

Definitely Jasmine and Aladdin. Beauty and the Beast- in a few short years there would have been the French Revolution, the castle would be torn apart and Belle would have upped sticks back to the provinces with the kids. That provincial town life would be preferable to having her head put in a guilletine.

She'd have reverted back to being 'not posh' and cheering as her husband's distant cousins were put to death in the hope that none of them would spot her from the guillotine steps and say 'But we were at your wedding!'

[terrywynne]

I can't think about a precise example but any of they myriad of relationships born of surviving traumatic events together/one character rescuing the other. In reality once the adrenaline has passed, and you realise that surviving was all you have in common, and now you are dealing with the PTSD then I think it would start to fall apart.

Talking of which, that has made me think of Deep Impact. High school couple marry to try and save her life and her family's (only to find out that they can't save her family after all), then when her whole family can't survive, her parents hand over her toddler sibling and send them off to high ground. Even if his family is incredibly supportive and helpful, there is a whole lot of counselling going to be needed there (on top of the usual high school romances dying out).

I hated the ending to the Harry Potter books. I just find it so crazy that most of the characters they show (except I think Nevilleand Draco?) hook up and stay with their romantic partners in the book and stay with them. And stay friends. No friendships drifting apart, no divorces, no going off to uni and making new friends. No PTSD. It has never made sense to me.

[SwishSwishBisch]

I’ll add Jerry and Dorothy from Jerry Maguire. He’d be back to working 20 hour days and banging cheerleaders and sport groupies within a couple of years, no doubt about it.

[Gwenhwyfar]

"Nessa and Smithy? No, he thought he could do better than her. He'd always look down on her a bit (wrongly so)"

And I've just found out she's supposed to be almost 20 years older than him!

[icdtap]

Ross and Rachel. Come on, don't get off that plane!
He's horrible and you will have another misunderstanding and break up in 2 weeks.

I was going to post about them but you got there before me!
He's awful in too many ways to mention.
She should have got together with Joey.

[TheCrowening]

@CuntyMcBollocks

I think you're wrong about Rose and Jack. Rose did all of the things she planned to do with Jack in honour of his memory, and she kept him alive in her heart for all of those years.

I think she romanticised him because all she had was that first whammy of infatuation and then he died in a massive traumatic event. So all her memories of him are clouded with that. Had he lived, within a few years she’d be sick to death of him farting in bed, leaving her to run round after the kids, and picking the dead skin off his feet on the sofa. Nothing glamorous about that. I think the shine would’ve worn off rather quickly.

[OooPourUsACupLove]

@Dinkydody

Andie would of quickly relished that nobody would love her like Ducky and she would dump Blaine ( Pretty in Pink)

That was the original ending, and also the ending in the book-of-the-film, which being an original 80s girl nerd I read instead of seeing the film. (Was also really disappointed by Andie’s dress in the film because the one I had imagined from the book was way cooler!)

[TheCrowening]

Can I just point out that David and Patrick in Schitts Creek will be together forever as they are the most in love on-screen couple ever...

And Alexis will forge a fabulous career in New York but will end up with Ted.
Eventually.

David and Patrick absolutely will always be together. They’re one of my all time favourite fictional couples.
I can’t see it with Alexis and Ted though, never thought they were suited.

[WhatMattersMost]

They're only "doomed" if your only measure of relationship success is longevity though, surely? I have had some incredibly successful relationships that were short-lived, and sometimes painful, because each one brought me a little closer to understanding myself and living my own life.

[WhatMattersMost]

So I'm Team Rose :)