Forget Paris

There is a Chinese Proverb saying "It is easy to fall in love, but not so easy to get along".

This could easily be seen on the couple - Mickey and Ellen, the couples who met and fell in love with each other in Paris. They eventually got married after Ellen was divorced. What happened in Paris was wonderful. The sightseeing around Paris, dancing by the river and everything else was so perfect that, they constantly remind themselves after they get married that everything could go back to the time in Paris.

A lot of time in the film, Mickey was told by his friends "Forget Paris". It was supposed to be telling Mickey to forget about how lovable and attractive the person was when they first met. A complete individual would normally have many sides of himself/herself. He acts differently when he is around different people or when he is in different context. When we first met someone who caught our attention, we instinctively present the best part of ourselves just to impress the person. However, while in marriage, people get to see every side of each others as they are going to stay together for a very long time, which is the reason many couples tend to have a lot more arguments when there is not enough understanding of each other before getting married. Getting into a relationship or a marriage is about the involving another person in your life while involve yourself in another person's life. It's about accommodation to each other, not dependence on each other.

According to the triangular theory of love, there are three components in a relationship, Intimacy, Passion and Commitment. A complete form of love, which is seemed to be the most perfect form - consummate love, consists of all three components. In real life, I think that three of the components exist in every relationship, it is just the degree of each components that differs. To me, marriage is largely based on commitment as we will need to compromise ourselves to each other so that the relationship satisfaction could be maintained. For Mickey and Ellen's case, we can easily see that they did not get to understand each other before getting married. There was merely passion in the marriage at first. I was glad that they had been trying to compromise, Mickey was willing to try giving up his career to stay at home with Ellen while Ellen was willing to send her father to her brother's place just wishing to make up for their marriage. Although the process was tough, they were able to realise it's each other's existence that matter to them the most in the end of movie. However, I am reserved to say that they will have a happily-ever-after-ending as they will still encounter a lot more problems in the future, which might slowly wear out their passion towards each other.

One thing interesting about the film is that the whole story was told from the third-person view. Applying it to real life, sometimes we see couples who have a lot of arguments and fightings, eventually got married; while sometimes couples that seem fine and demonstrating PDA in public, somehow did not manage to get there. Most of the time we might take a bet among friends on how long a couple would last and sometimes things just turn out the other way round. To me, it is always important to have communication. Whether a couple fight, argue or just stay sweet, they could go for a long way as long as they are willing to communicate to each other about their problems and concerns. Marriage is not the end but another beginning, while communication is the key to the happy ending.

Let me end this with a quote by Eric Fromm.
Immature love says: I love you because I need you
Mature love says: I need you because I love you
- Eric Fromm (1956)