Epilogue
For us, the most important take-home message from this book is that
relationships should not be left to chance. Relationships are one of the most
rewarding of human experiences, above and beyond other gifts that life has
to offer. In fact, one study found that 73 percent of over three hundred
university student participants were willing to sacrifice the majority of their
goals in life for a romantic relationship. But despite the importance we
assign to our most intimate bonds, most of us still know very little about the
science behind romantic relationships and allow ourselves all too often to
be guided by misconceptions and myths.
Even the two of us, having thoroughly studied the science behind adult
attachment styles, occasionally find ourselves falling back into familiar
patterns of thinking when we hear a certain love story or watch a romantic
movie that pushes all our old buttons. We recently saw a popular boy-
meets-girl film that did just that. A young man falls passionately in love
with a beautiful and intelligent woman. He becomes consumed by the
desire to spend the rest of his life with her. She, on the other hand, is
determined to stay free and unattached—and tells him so from the start.
Throughout the story, she sends mixed messages; she flirts and strings him
along, which allows him to keep hoping for a happy ending. But in an
atypical Hollywood twist, she breaks his heart. He later discovers that she
has gone on to marry the man of her dreams and is living happily ever after.
(Well, to the best of his, and our, knowledge, because the movie ends there.)
Our first reaction, along with the rest of the audience, was to fall in love
with the woman. She was strong, passionate, independent—a truly free
spirit. And she was honest; she warned him in advance that she wasn’t
looking for a serious relationship. We certainly couldn’t fault her for that.
Besides, he obviously just wasn’t “the one” for her (after all, we were told
she later found “the one”). For much of the movie we were also enthralled
with the romantic possibility that she might open up to him and he would
win her over. Although the film started with a spoiler—saying that it wasn’t
a love story—we never stopped wishing for its two stars to ride off into the
sunset together.