Oh man this is such a big one. There's so much media out there that depicts total loser guys winding up with incredible women & vice versa. If you're a young man & didn't have dad or older brother guide you through your end of the responsibilities in a relationship, there's almost nowhere to get the correct information, and tons of 'malware' information out there. One might be inclined to point to feminist literature on the subject, but that will just make you a doormat.
The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between Holden and Naomi in The Expanse. (Okay, so it's not a marriage. Does that really matter?)
I'm sure there are others, but they are difficult to recall precisely because they just are, without calling too much attention to themselves. So there's a selection bias in what we remember.
Star Trek and parodies are really coming in clutch for good examples of married life.
Holden is no peach of a partner either. Don’t play the “Holden does something the hardest way possible because he can’t ask for help” drinking game, you’ll be unconscious in a few hours.
Bruh.
The parents in "That '70s show" perhaps? I see the irony in this title tho.
Sentimental and idealized are very vague, but there are a ton of US sitcoms that have this premise. But also, watching a couple just go about their day to day life that 90% of people go through seems boring as hell, who would watch that?
Before Sunrise trilogy comes to mind
They were both hot in high school. They peaked in high school and married/created a family with their high school sweetheart. That's the entire point of the show.
> They had kids. They took care of them.
They were also neglectful and callous.
> They didn't exactly love each other, but they didn't hated one another also.
Did you watch the show? They most certainly verged on hating each other, and were never as ambivalent as you make out.
> The most realistically portrayed family on TV in decades.
The Middle. Malcom in the Middle. That 70's Show. Any of a dozen "prestige" television shows that aren't sitcoms.
Come on. This entire argument is ridiculous.
TV shows are about drama. If you have "this relationship is too good" and "this relationship is too bad" as exit clauses here, of course you are going to have trouble.
Does Ben and Leslie from Parks and Rec count for you? Or is that "too idealized"?
Pro-tip: if someone says that you should just do what they say because they know better than you, run as fast as you can because they’re a demon.
I have witnessed some truly weird conversations in hypereducated blue-state America. I never say anything, but I always take mental notes.
One example:
So I go out to lunch with this friend, and they invite a friend of theirs. A woman, in her 20s, from an Ivy League school. I'm not sure why we were all having lunch together actually, in retrospect.
Anyway, she's talking about how she has this boyfriend. I think he's in the Air Force or something (which at some level is icky to these people). And she has some time off from her career for some reason, so she has some time. And she's spending a lot of it just being with him, to the point that, she'll cook dinner and stuff. And she implies that she's having a lot of sex with him, and that she's being very giving in all this, and you can tell that at some level she just finds him very attractive and takes pleasure in delighting him (as he, I assume, does likewise in making her happy). Which is basically the description of a good relationship, right?
But she also has to justify this feeling to herself -- that she likes making her boyfriend happy. And she has to justify to herself that she's doing things like cooking dinner that, on the one hand, she's voluntarily chosen to do, but that, on the other hand, she clearly also thinks are somehow "beneath her". So she explains it to us at the table like this: She's intentionally ruining her boyfriend, so that when they eventually break up -- because that's what you do, right? -- then he will not be satisfied in any of his subsequent relationships. She has to frame her natural impulse to be kind and giving, as a political act that is actually a kind of cruelty -- because that's what she assumes we will approve of.
None of us ask for this justification, this is just a monologue that she volunteers. I don't say anything, but -- what the fuck? I think this has become a normal (if unnatural) trained attitude.
I could give other examples too, but that's enough for now.
Something is just very broken.
Friday Night Lights
That's the definition of the ideal boyfriend for most younger women.
So the hot tall confident rich guys play the field, because they can. Worse, some of the hottest and most confident guys are narcissists - because narcissists and sociopaths are very good at seducing people with love bombing and future faking.
Inexperienced women get their hearts broken and decide that all men are jerks - partly because at this stage the kind funny not-so-hot guys don't register as realistic prospects on their dating radar.
There are subcultures within this, and there's certainly a niche of women who find clever, funny, and kind men more attractive than rich and tall etc men. But it's relatively small compared to most of the population.
At the same time there's a strongly gender-polarised and adversarial (actually hate-filled) culture in the US where wannabe manly men who hate everything woke etc are in a permanent war with feminists who are convinced that all masculinity is toxic.
It's not so much that "guys have to up their game" but that the entire culture is emotionally dysfunctional, and dating is stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence where healthy give-and-take relationships aren't modelled at all.
Can you think of one movie or TV show which models a realistically happy working adult marriage which isn't either sentimental and idealised, or doesn't end in drama, tragedy, and betrayal?