Damn you Logan Huntzberger!

After watching way too many Gilmore Girls episodes for my own good lately, and pining over the oh-so-charming Logan Huntzberger, boyfriend to Rory Gilmore, I’m starting to wonder if these Hollywood ‘boyfriends’ are ruining our perceptions of what ‘real’ men are?

Logan is naturally the creation of a female mind – a fictional character. Of course he has his flaws, but he makes up for them times 10! He’s full of grand gestures, spontaneity, and surprises. What woman wouldn’t want him?

Unfortunately perfect characters like Logan Huntzberger are brought to us through TV screens and movie screens time and time again, causing us to measure our real relationships against these fictional ideals.

Although not everything we see in movies and TV shows have that perfect, happy ending, these are often the ones we remember, the ideals we may hold our own relationships to.

The stars of TV shows and movies we pine after often have the “full package” – good looks, great job, great personality, fill in the blank of anything you could ever want in a man. So we look for that in real life.

When we compare the men we know to the men in movies, it becomes extremely unfair to both parties. With such high expectations, real men can’t possibly be expected to actually ever live up to them. Consequently women are frequently disappointed because the men are not living up to these unfair expectations.

I’m in no way saying that you should not have expectations of your partner, because you most certainly should! But having expectations that are unrealistic may just end in disappointment.

While reading an article the other day on the book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by author Lori Gottlieb, it got me thinking more about relationships and expectations and the reason why controversy has surrounded this book. Critics have accused her of being anti-feminist because she uses the word ‘settling’ in the title. Gottlieb addresses this criticism by explaining that, “A lot of women took a you-can-have-it-all attitude and called that feminism, which it’s not. They confused feminism with you can have it all, and tried to apply you can have it all to dating.” When in fact her book says the opposite. She explains that at any age you need to look at what’s important and you should never settle for somebody that you don’t truly love. But in order to find that person you have to be more open-minded about who that person might be. So it’s not about lowering your standards. It’s about having really high standards, but only about the things that really matter.

I think Michelle Obama hit it right on the nose when talking about her husband in an interview. “He was special in terms of his honesty, his sincerity, his compassion for other people. Cute’s good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it’s, Who are you as a person? That’s the advice I would give to women: Don’t look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart. Look at the soul. Look at how the guy treats his mother and what he says about women. How he acts with children he doesn’t know. And, more important, how does he treat you? When you’re dating a man, you should always feel good. You should never feel less than. You should never doubt yourself. You shouldn’t be in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t make you completely happy and make you feel whole.” Well said Mrs. Obama!

No one is perfect. Hell I’m not even close to being perfect, so why should the guy I date have to be perfect? ‘Perfect for me’ is what I will strive for. We shouldn’t focus on trivial things like height or movie star looks or how good they seem on paper, what matters is how you feel when you are with this person. Focus on things that will actually matter five to ten years down the road. And for God’s sake, keep movie romances in the fantasy world and don’t equate them with real life relationships!