Throughout the years, romance has become a staple in Hollywood movies, with elements of love in rom-coms to horror movies. A commonality between the many movie genres is that they set unrealistic expectations for romance and perpetuate clichés.

In addition to movies, Hollywood establishes false expectations of love through celebrity relationships. While the relationships are real, the media only portrays the positive parts of the relationships, not the negative. 

“It’s not always real and they make it look like the relationship is very happy and perfect when in reality, not all relationships are perfect,” movie-lover and junior Kaitlyn Givens said. 

These portrayals of romance, though pleasant to watch, can cause insecurities and create false expectations for one’s relationships in actual life. Common themes in most movies when it comes to romance include the male love interest being overly persistent to the point of creepiness — like Joe Bloomberg in Netflix’s original show “You” — large age gaps between the male and female love interests and the couple falling in love seconds after meeting, among others. 

Perfect, unrealistic relationships depicted in Hollywood result in people looking for their perfect match, their soulmate. People have extremely high and implausible expectations for a significant other, causing difficulty in finding a relationship at all. 

“…It makes me look for a perfect relationship and want a perfect relationship when that’s not reasonable,” Givens said. 

Movies should not stop including romantic themes, but they should try giving audiences a more realistic portrayal of romance. This way, audiences can still enjoy romantic plots while not building false expectations in their real lives.