Ladies (and perhaps gentlemen) something you're doing on a regular or semi-regular basis could be ruining your personal life, according to a new study. It's causing you to have unrealistic expectations with it comes to love and impairing your communication with your partner. This thing is the rom com.
Just what is a rom com?
While it sounds like something along the lines of an anal probe or a high-powered vibrator, a rom com is simply a romantic comedy. And some psychologists believe that watching rom coms can affect intimate relationships in pretty significant ways.
They found that fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Hitch often fail to communicate with their partners effectively, with many holding the view that if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you needing to tell them.
Psychologists at the Family and Personal Relationships Laboratory at Edinburgh's Heriot Watt University studied 40 top box office hits from 1995-2005.
They included You've Got Mail, Maid In Manhattan, The Wedding Planner and While You Were Sleeping.
Dr Bjarne Holmes said: "Marriage counsellors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it.
"We now have some emerging evidence that suggests popular media play a role in perpetuating these ideas in people's minds.
"The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realise."
We're not surprised (though we're more likely to believe that our iPods are playing the soundtrack to our lives), but we're still a little hung up on the term. It just sounds so.... dirty. Are we really that behind the times that we've never heard the term "rom com?" We saw "Sleepless in Seattle" at least 20 times. Maybe we're too young (we were eleven when it came out) or too old. Our old friend Scanner Bryan even threw out the term back in January but we seem to have missed it.
According to Wiktionary, the term was most likely inspired by "sitcom" or situational comedy, for those of you out there who are even younger and/or more dense than we are.
[Press Association: 'Rom coms' can ruin your love life]
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