Matthew Hussey says people expect dating to feel like a movie, demanding instant intense chemistry instead of letting connection grow slowly. This cinematic mindset creates unrealistic pressure and sabotages relationships before they have a chance to develop.
The stakes feel impossibly high, in part because we've come to view what we are entitled to romantically as this impossibly grand thing. You know, like it's everything we've ever seen in the movies. When we create stakes that are that high for something, what we're expecting is a feeling up front as opposed to something that we build with someone, like a sort of an ember that we nurture into a flame over time. We're expecting, like, the flames from the beginning. And I think it's a really dangerous way to approach relationships.
