WALK A LIFETIME IN MY SHOES 2.0

500 DAYS OF SUMMER

Spoiler Alert!

For the past year (2023) I have been thinking about the idea of love and there being one person tailored for just for me somewhere out there, just waiting for me to meet them until l watched this movie towards the end of the and my perspective on the matter shifted.

Tom is your everyday Joe (not Goldberg) who has this fascination with old music and unconventional clothing. His other fascination is finding "the one" and when he meets Summer he is sure that he met the love of his life because they like similar things. Although Summer tells him from the get go that she doesn't want anything serious, his obsession with her being the perfect girl for him makes him believe he can love her so much that she'll change her mind and fall desperately in love with him.

This isn't the case as she likes him less and less as time goes on and when she breaks things off with him he feels betrayed. This is because he feels entitled to her love, because she's the one she had to conform to it although she verbally communicated that she will never be that for him and has no intentions of doing so. His obsession betrayed him but he couldn't blame himself so he painted her out to be this villain who broke his heart.

When Summer gets married he is left confused. "How could she get married to someone that isn't me?", "She said she didn't want anything serious!"
You see Tom, it isn't about whether or not you were the perfect boyfriend for her. It really isn't about you at this stage. She found someone who she knew from the get go she wanted something tangible with and that wasn't you so deal with it.

I guess what I'm getting at is that we sometimes put so much pressure on the next person to live up to our idea of the one, and when they don't turn out like what we have in our minds we feel betrayed like they knew what they were signing up for in the first place. We romanticise perfection in relationships so much that every little mishap we equate it to the bombing of Hiroshima.

People are just that, people. They have what makes them tick and no amount of loving them will ever change them into what you want them to be. Instead it only pushes them away because you begin to focus on moulding this person into who you think they are supposed to be instead of giving attention to who they are.

I don't think I believe in the one anymore, maybe I'm wrong and that is okay. I refuse to believe there is someone out there perfect in every way for me. I do, however, believe that I'll stumble upon a good person who fits well enough to build with and if it comes to an end it doesn't necessarily mean the heavens have frowned on me. It simply means we came to an end and I'll have to be okay with that. Life moves on after all.

This may contradict what I've written thus far or what I'm yet to write but bear with me. I write chapters based on how I feel then, and my views aren't set in stone. They change with the tides.

In conclusion. Be very vigilant how you treat your partner. Are you focused on them or who you want them to be? If it is the latter then revise your approach.