"Relationships last not because they were destined to last. Relationships last long because two people made a choice to keep it, fight for it and work for it." -unknown-
There are people who believe that love and life partner are destined by fate, while some are not. A friend of mine once said: "Anyone can walk into your life due to any kind of reasons. That is happen. But in order to keep the relationship, it requires build and manage." And I agree with this. For example, anyone can sit around you on the first day of university orientation week. You may start a conversation with different people at that time, hanging out with different groups of friends, and after all these years, who stayed around you or who do you choose to stay with? I believe are those you build and manage the friendship, which requires all of you to make certain sacrifices, understandings, adaptions to work things out, rather than those just happened to talk to you in group assignment.
With a romantic film title, "Forget Paris" is a romantic comedy that shows the realistic part of love and marriage after "honeymoon period". Mickey is a NBA referee and he met Ellen, an airline executive, in French. Two of them fall in love to each other quickly and want to commit in the relationship, but they face many challenges. Major challenges which involve their life decision and planning included giving up their favourite job to compromise and please the other one, leaving their favourite place or perhaps their comfort zone to stay together, compromising their quality time due to different job nature, how they support each other when they get to know they have low probability to have children, which always lead them to question about whether they were making the decision too fast or they were not meant to be together.
Social Exchange Theory suggested that people make comparison in evaluating positive as well as negative outcomes in any kinds of relationship (Lange, Kruglanski & Higgins, 2011) while one is expecting the same effort or reward from the partner as he or she invested in the relationship. In other words, if one is putting efforts in the relationship, the other one is expected to put in the same level of efforts in return. By evaluating and balancing the positive and negative outcomes, the equality contribution occurs in the relationship achieves Equity Theory (Hat field, Traupmann, Sprecher, Utne & Hay, 1985). This can be illustrated by a Mathematical formula:
Rewards (Positive events) - Punishments (negative events) = Outcomes
People tend to increase the positive outcome by investing more rewards to reinforce the one who treat them equally, meaning if they receive same level of effort from the partner, they are willing to make the effort to produce positive outcome (functional relationship) too. However, if the punishments happen to be more than rewards, which brings a negative outcome (deficit relationship), one would probably invest more in punishment to "punish in return" (Hat field, Traupmann, Sprecher, Utne & Hay, 1985). When Mickey and Ellen face challenges, they unintentionally take turns to compromise as they remember the sacrifices made by the other one. Yet, while they view each other "care less than I do", they started not to compromise anymore.
At the end of the film, it is happy to see the couple still willing to work things out for the relationship. It shows the reality of love and relationship which involve understandings, acceptance, sacrifices, and the "real self" to live together. I was encouraged by a mentor of mine. She viewed a wedding ceremony as a community, which each and everyone of the guests have the responsibility to help the couple maintain the relationship and commitment as they were invited to witness the couple make their vows in the wedding. Therefore I was glad to see in the film, friends around show support to Mickey and Ellen whenever they face problem in their marriage. I wish my friends and family can be my support and help my husband and I to keep an eye on my marriage in future, suggesting constructive advice, not just make the marriage happen only, but build and manage it.
References
Hatfield, E., Traupmann, J., Sprecher, S., Utne, M., & Hay, J. (1985). Compatible and incompatible relationships. New York, NY: Springer.
Lange, P. A. M. V., Kruglanski, A. W., & Higgins, E. T. (2011). Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume Two. United Kingdom, UK: SAGE Publications Inc.
Picture from Google
https://www.google.com/search?q=Forget+Paris&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=667&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2sfyb_pvLAhVBU44KHc6ADdIQ_AUIBygC#imgdii=xCva8rmahIMiwM%3A%3BxCva8rmahIMiwM%3A%3BeTQe0S8FRusPCM%3A&imgrc=xCva8rmahIMiwM%3A
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