If I can be allowed to present a second-hand opinion based on the book and without exposure to the movie, my mother told me recently she’d read the book and had no interest in the movie.
Her reasoning is that Gilbert went on this epic voyage of self-discovery which resulted in her finding another man to fulfill her inner needs. If she’d found the strength to deal with herself by herself (at least for a while), it would have been a far more profound story.
So do you think the director was portraying her as schizophrenic or was it supposed to be God/Angels speaking to her?
That’s true. However, if one committed to this thing, and meant it, they should at least involve the person they’ve fallen out of love with in the decision, rather than unilaterally saying “Wha!? I’m not in love anymore! Wha’d ya expect, a lifetime commitment!?”
It seemed to me as if the movie expected the audience to actually take the supernatural at face value. It espouses woo in other ways too (like the guru fortune teller).
The movie shows her husband taking those vows seriously. And in 2 scenes he all but gets on his knees and begs her to come back.
I’d like to reiterate that her husband wasn’t a bad guy. He needed to grow up a lot, but that’s it. Had he been cheating on her, beating the shit out of her, coming home drunk every night or gambling the mortgage away, then taking off would be more than justified on her part.
His big sin? He wanted to start a family. The sonovabitch!:mad:
I know. I’m on the husband’s side completely. It wasn’t like he even surprised her about wanting kids. She knew that when she married him. She promised him something she wasn’t really willing to give.
I’m hesitant to comment on this, having read neither the book nor seen the film (and not being interested in doing either), but the comments on marriage have intruigued me. Like some other posters, I think marital vows should be taken rather more seriously than some of the comments would suggest they are.
It shouldn’t be a case of “I don’t love you anymore/I’m not happy anymore, so I’m outta here”. Over the course of a long-term relationship, your feelings may well change. One person is unlikely to make you completely happy for every moment of your life, or to keep filling you with those gorgeous “in love” feelings forever. I don’t think that means you get to just walk away - you committed yourself to that person for life. You owe that committment at least an attempt to work things out. And no, you can’t force yourself to love someone. But if you stay and put the work in, you might remember why you loved them in the first place, and some of those feelings may reignite.
I’ve only beem married 2.5 years (together for 6.5), but one thing I’m learning is that it takes work. A few months ago a colleague who was about to get married asked me if I had any tips. I thought about it for a minute, and responded: “It’s harder than you think”. In hindsite possibly not the most tactful thing to say to a bride-to-be, but I think it’s true, and more people should be aware of that before getting married.
Of course it’s different in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship. And the children thing would be a dealbreaker for me, too. I checked that my now-husband wanted kids as soon as the relationship got serious, because I knew there was no point in pursuing it if he didn’t. I certainly wouldn’t have married him and hope he might change his mind afterwards. That’d hardly be fair to either of us.
I’m still not getting this. Why would either partner want to continue a marriage in which one of the partners is no longer in love?
Also, he wanted children. Should he have children with someone who doesn’t love him?
Let’s say an uncuntish woman falls out of love with her husband but continues the marriage and has children. That’s preferable?
Either people are claiming that love is an easily explainable phenomenon and something that someone can control or both partners should be forced to remain in a relationship in which one of the partners does not love the other. Or maybe the third possibility is that uncuntish women never fall out of love???
Again, I’m confused.
I’ll just add here that for decades, nearly every time I said that I didn’t want kids, nearly inevitably I would hear, “You’ll change your mind,” often accompanied with a look like I couldn’t possibly know better, or with anecdotes of women who did just that. I even heard ‘are you sure?’-type questions from my gynecologist, at age 40.
I know it does happen that some people change their minds. (My husband changed his, to no.) I think it’s quite possible that she believed that she, too, would change hers.
She shouldn’t have made those vows in the first place is what we’re aying, and if she did make the vows, she should have made a bare minimum effort to honor them. She certainly should not have lied and told him she was willing to have kids when she wasn’t.
Moreover, in the movie, she did not fall out of love with him. A supernatural voice told her to leave him.
And once again, the most egregious thing was her tone about it all. No tact, no feeling, no concern at all about jerking the rug out from under her husband with no warning. Just me me me. She’s like that through the whole movie. She never cares about other people and thinks that spirituality is all about loving and gratifying and “forgiving” herself.
I don’t see how you can anticipate changing your mind or just take it for granted that you will. That makes no sense to me. You can certainly always acknowledge that it’s a possibility, but a certainty? What? She was certain that she would change her mind? That comes off as dissembling and self-serving to me. If she was really willing to stake a lifetime commitment on a certainty that she would change her mind about something years down the road, then she was an idiot to begin with.
OK, fine. But dumping him and running off almost immediately? The timing stinks and strongly implies a affair during marriage.
I think people are saying that love is more than just a feeling of infatuation; it is also a product of will. If you marry someone, you sometimes have to work at loving them and not give it up when you don’t have butterflies in your stomach anymore. If you can’t make that commitment, you shouldn’t be getting married.
Several people have been using the phrase “fall out of love.” What kind of “love” are we talking about, that a person can be walking along and—“Whoops! I fell! I don’t love you any more”?
I’d rather let someone else with more personal experience address this. But I have heard from many people who have been married long and successfully that the kind of love that a successful marriage is based on is more than just a feeling that can come and go: it’s something you work at, something you practice, something you nurture.
I’ve hesitated to respond because I, too, haven’t seen the movie or read the book. But as to the marriage thing - she may not love him right now. If she hadn’t bailed because “oh, noes…I’m soooo unfulfilled”, she may’ve found that she loved him again in 6 months. I’m not married. But being in any kind of family should teach you that there’s more to a relationship than what’s going on right at any given moment. The feeling of not being blissfully in love may be no more real than the giddy feeling of first love. Hopefully, in the end, most people realize that, in the words of Carly Simon
Anyway, my opinion is less valid than others because I haven’t seen the movie or read the book.
And I didn’t know until just now that Sue Sylvester played Julia Child’s sister in Julie and Julia.
StG
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Wow. You’re a really good poet.
Learn to attribute your quotes, thief.
My husband and I don’t “work” on our marriage. I guess we’re lucky in that we’re both pretty easy-going outside of work. I simply like being around him. I dunno. Maybe I’m lucky.
OTOH, I almost married a guy but broke off the engagement. We were together for 3.5 years. I’m pretty sure I was in love with him at first but my perspective on life and goals changed during the course of the relationship. He was kind of a dick but not necessarily abusive. I was lucky enough that I woke up before we got married. However, the decision to break up came as an epiphany. He said something minorly assholish and I suddenly couldn’t stand the sight of him. Phew! Dodged a bullet.
:rolleyes:
Son, everyone on the planet knows that sonnet. Even illiterate millet farmers in Namibia.
You honestly thought I was plagiarizing William Fucking Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116?
Seriously?
I really, really doubt that Lemur866 of all people was attempting to pass that off as his own.