Are celebrity relationships ruining your love life?

Saw this article on Yahoo! about how saturated we are with stories about celebrity relationships, and how that could impact your personal life. We talk about this a lot in Chapter 6: Reality Check. While watching hook-up to break-up trajectories among the celeb species is nearly a national sport, it may have some negative consequences for you. As David writes:

Celebrity Message: Commitment Schmommitment

Really, the biggest message we get from celebrity hook-ups is that marriage is the commitment equivalent of dating. Find someone you like, get married. Don't like that person any more, get divorced. It's hard to understand why celebrity couples seem to rush into marriage faster than Sanjaya fans rush to the phone lines. We see it all the time -- quick marriages, quick divorces. And I think that can send the dangerous message that marriage doesn't really matter. While I'm certainly not one to say that there's only one traditional way to have a relationship, I think that the message being sent -- a wedding is as casual an occasion as happy hour -- cheapens a tie that ought to be more precious. The celeb warning: A wedding is more than a party with cake. The positive lesson real couples can take from it: Listen to your wedding vows, and honor them.

Let's also look at the top five lessons learned from romantic comedies from The Bridal Wave and think about this: if these are "date" movies, what kinds of messages are you sending to someone you might end up in a relationship with?


1. Love happens in a moment, and no one really minds it if
you end up with your boyfriend’s brother, because, you
know, he’s “the one.” In this oeuvre of film even the most
unacceptable behavior is acceptable so long as it’s in the
name of true love. Source: The Family Stone.
2. It’s all right to screw someone over as long as she is uptight
or somehow unlikable. Feel free to leave her at the altar;
she’s a bitch anyway. Source: Four Weddings and a Funeral.
3. If you think you hate him, he may be “the one.” Source:
You’ve Got Mail.
4. Hiring a hooker is a shortcut to finding your soul mate.
Source: The Wedding Date, Pretty Woman.
5. There’s always a gorgeous girl hiding behind glasses and
bad clothes just waiting for the right guy to reveal her.
Source: She’s All That.