My go-to comfort movie is the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee. Well, if I’m honest, it’s actually Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but I feel so much smarter when I tell people it’s Sense and Sensibility and I really do love Sense and Sensibility.
If you’ve never seen it, it’s typically Austen stuff: a bunch of young women in corsets go to each other’s houses and gossip about the men they want to marry. Sixteen-year-old Marianne Dashwood is a hopeless romantic, who believes absolutely in the all-consuming power of love. She snubs the devoted attentions of 35-year-old Colonel Brandon and throws her lot in with the dashing and very handsome 25-year-old John Willoughby, who sweeps her off her feet and turns out to be a proper git. He reads her poetry, cuts locks of her hair to keep, and then dramatically dumps her for someone with a lot more money.
Despite having both seen the film and read the book many times, I didn’t actually realise how old the characters were until I googled it for this column. I am more than a little concerned about why either of these adult men was hitting on a 16-year-old, but I guess they did things differently back in the 1790s.
Once Willoughby has slithered away like the proverbial snake he is, Marianne finally realises that it is Col Brandon who really loved her, and that true love is much quieter and more enduring than anything a Regency fanny rat can muster. She starts to see just how kind, devoted, and thoroughly decent Brandon is and eventually learns to love him completely. If you can manage to ignore the disturbing age gap, it’s quite a beautiful love story where the good guy wins the girls in the end and Marianne learns that her intense passions should be “regulated… checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment”.
The last time I watched this film, I found myself wondering if any of us will ever learn this lesson – not the one about passion being checked by religion and employment, that sounds spectacularly dull, but the one about not confusing a violent emotional reaction with the kind of love you can build a future with. I might sound like a terribly unromantic cynic, but hear me out. I think Austen is right: a relationship that completely consumes you is not romantic, it’s a giant red flag.
Your date isn't a 'narcissist' - they just don't like you
Read MoreAusten first drafted Sense and Sensibility in 1790, at the height of the Romantic movement when poets were traipsing around Europe, trying to get laid and espousing the importance of emotional sensibility. The warning of the book is that our heart is not always the best judge of character, and our crotches even less so. Of course, Austen would never stoop so low as to bring crotches into it, but I will.
We still believe that love will arrive like a thunderbolt from the heavens, that when the “right one” arrives, you’ll know about it. I’ve heard more than one person talking about having “butterflies” in their stomach at the mere thought of their latest crush, or that they “can’t stop thinking about” them. I’ve experienced both of these things myself, but none of this is good. I’m not saying that a cool indifference is the way to go, but we do need to challenge the idea that this kind of head-melting, tummy-turning rush of emotion is a reliable marker of genuine affection.
I should know. I have done the leg work here. I have a terrible weakness for the Willoughbys of this world. It’s rather embarrassing to admit it, given the fact I literally research this stuff for a living, but show me a flashy f**kboy with a bucketload of charm, who still lives in his mum’s basement and believes his band will make it, and I will go weak at the knees. These people are not good for me, and it is a disaster every single time. But show me a sensible man, with a good job, who is genuinely interested in my welfare, and I panic. “Urgh!! He’s so boring.” I promise you, Pamela Anderson has better taste in men than I do.
Every single time I am in the throes of passion with one of these Willoughbys, I am awash with hormones, stomach flutters and heart palpitations. “I think this might be the one,” I will gush to my long-suffering friends as they exhale slowly and squeeze my hand. Jump forward a month and I will be crying in a puddle wondering what I ever saw in that bastard, while the same friends feed me tea and toast.
I am telling you, a big emotional reaction to another human being is not a good sign – it is certainly not love. Scientists have a word for this: “limerence”. That obsessive, knee-buckling, daydreamy state of being “in love” is actually a rollercoaster of neurochemistry with a hormonal chaser. Researchers have found alarming similarities between the brain chemistry of people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and those in the grip of limerence.
And what about those stomach “butterflies”? This sensation is caused by the release of dopamine and norepinephrine into the brain. It does the same thing at times of anxiety and fear. In fact, both excitement and anxiety create undulations in your gut. So, it might not be that you are in love, so much as really anxious around that person. I am not a neurobiologist, but I am not so sure that your entire limbic system going into overdrive at the very thought of someone you met on Tinder is really the indicator of true love the Romantic poets would have us believe.
As Marianne discovered, real and abiding love is deeper, quieter, and much less tumultuous. It is the Brandons of the world who are in it for the long term. Of course, you should feel happiness and excitement around the person you are romantically interested in, but let’s get rid of the idea that Cupid will strike you down with his arrow or that a “grand passion” is to be encouraged.
The next time I find myself in a situation where my knees are giving way and my head is swimming, I fully intend to view this as a warning sign. This is my body saying it feels a lot of anxiety and trepidation around this person, and I need to ask myself why that is. It doesn’t matter how good they are in bed – what would Jane Austen do?
Either that, or I’ll just get dumped again and cry whilst watching Sense and Sensibility for the millionth time. But if I can save one other person from such a fate, it’ll be worth it.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The surprising sign that you are not actually in love )
Also on site :
- ‘Up close and personal’ – Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce share intimate date night as onlooker gives insight into romance
- Italy holds referendum on easing citizenship rules
- Ukrainian drone attacks force Moscow airport closures