Before you could put a TV character’s quote on top of an image of the character themselves, relationships were simply fifty years of begging someone to listen. Thanks to a mix of the internet, TV and graphic editing software, we can now explain our feelings with things that fake people have done/said.
I wouldn’t call this indirect, but it’s akin to being an assassin whose only method is to tweet about all the murders he might commit. If Republicans used this same tactic in their campaigns, you would have a bunch of sixty-year-old men describing the definition of rape as “that one scene in Death Wish, possibly.”
The CBS show, How I Met Your Mother, is extremely popular when it comes to statements about love and romance. And, as it often is with things that don’t actually exist, a lot of these “tips” don’t exactly apply to real life. Sorry, Tumblr.
Make A Massive Deal Out Of Being Single
The idea of being “Forever alone” was invented by people who decided that, since they were still in their pajama pants at 6:00 PM, that they were doomed to a life of loneliness. The amount that it’s never been funny is astronomical. 9/11 jokes are more inherently funny than someone saying “I like Green Lantern comics and Cheetos so much that the warmth of humanity will never touch my skin.” If you invited Forever Alone to a party, Slavery would ask you why he was being so awkward.
Despite it having the same comedic value as finding out that your genital warts are actually little tumors, “Forever Alone” has caught on and taken a life of its own. People have claimed that they’ll never find love for forever, but they never had such a catchy name for it until now. However, just being single in this moment has become synonymous with crying for the rest of your life.
Romantic comedy sitcoms make being single into the worst thing that can possibly happen to someone. How I Met Your Mother sometimes bases itself around relationships, or the lack thereof, to an exhausting extent. Are you not currently looking for the mother of your future children? What are you doing with your life?
I understand what it’s like to be by yourself and on the computer. It’s a rough life to live when you’re single and not doing anything to change that except reposting fictional character’s quotes. How could someone not want you, especially since you’ve worked so hard to be so unremarkable? Regardless of how distended you are from the actual world, there are more important things in life than wondering how you got to be so boring or “Forever alone.”
Please, Dad. Enough. We’ve heard about how sad you are for eight years now.
Getting Over Someone Should Be The Longest Process Ever
Everything ends. These everythings include stuff like relationships and The Raid: Redemption, and, when the credits roll, you mourn the loss of both. Now, I’m not trying to compare someone telling you that you’re better off as friends to a super cop fighting four machete-wielding gang members in a narrow hallway, but I totally am.
Despite how much you mourn, getting over a person should never take as long as it does on How I Met Your Mother. Relationships that lasted ten episodes have a five season healing process. This is especially prevalent in the case of Ted and Robin, who dated for a decent time, broke up, and remained friends. However, Ted never really got over his feelings for her, no matter what he said. Robin is engaged and Ted was spouting whines about how she should be with him in the very next episode. I don’t want to call that an unhealthy mindset, but Ted Bundy had a better grasp on relationships than Ted Mosby.
If You Love Someone, Tell Them, No Matter What
This isn’t just a How I Met Your Mother problem, since most sitcom romances are made when someone makes enough grand statements about love for another person to wake up next to them. HIMYM continues the popular trend of making sure someone knows your feelings, no matter what the cost.
Real life doesn’t work exactly this way. Making sure that someone knows your feelings is very much based on the conditions. Do you like a female? Great, tell her! Does she have a boyfriend? Yeah? Then I lied about a few sentences ago. Do not tell her. Under any circumstances. HIMYM hasn’t come around on real life’s popular, I’m-a-jealous-paranoid-guy-and-if-this-“best-friend”-hits-on-my-girlfriend,-I’ll punch-or-hate-him” theory.
Alright, HIMYM. I’ll give you this one.
Not Having Long Term Relationships Is Shallow
Some people aren’t good at relationships. I, for example, wouldn’t say that I’m terrible at dating, but I’d have a better chance of interpreting a T-Rex’s sign language than trying to figure out if a woman is interested without her explicitly stating that she’s not. And I’m not trying to be self-deprecating here. Knowing proper dinosaur hand signals is fucking hard.
How I Met Your Mother tends to look at casual sex with a kind of side eye. It’s usually the butt of a joke, or something that’s seen as immature. While I can’t change the views of thousands of people who think the funniest thing in the world is to say “Hope you wore a condom!” before their pale skin bursts into flame, let me the be the thousandth to say that there’s nothing wrong with casual sex, as long as both parties know that it’s casual.
Long term relationships aren’t an objective sign of maturity. They’re a sign of two people liking each other enough to commit for longer than a night or two. And long-term relationships can be just as immature as one night stands can be. It’s the same reason that hateful couples stay together for years on end that my cat humps the same pillow every few days. They’re dumb and not sensible enough to know better. You’re not a greater person because you haven’t driven someone to homicide in the two years that you’ve sweet talked them.
