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I recently watched The Accidental Husband snatched straight from my Netflix queue. I picked it because it starred Uma Thurman, Colin Firth, and it was new – and I hadn’t watched a relatively new movie lately.
The premise was interesting, albeit written weakly. Man (played by Mr. Richard Dean Morgan) is slated to get married, bride-to-be has cold feet and calls in her favorite radio-talk show host, Emma Lloyd. Ms. Lloyd listens to what bride-to-be says, and strongly discourages her from getting married eluding to the responsibility of Man or lack thereof, suggesting that neither are ready to be married. Man, heart-broken and beaten, strives for revenge – which offers its cold hand. So, ensues his revenge, but unbeknownst to either Man or Ms. Lloyd, the two fall in love – calling into question all that Ms. Lloyd holds dear in her search for REAL love with Mr. Responsible.
I found the plot interesting because it seems to strike in the face of many a self-help book and what realists calls love and what romantics call love, favoring in the side of romantics. How could one be surprised though, it is a Hollywood flick. I’ve read two books in the past year that have encouraged the responsible side of love – Can Christians Love Too Much and Safe People. Safe People, also written by a Christian author, suggests what safe people would look like and how they would act. The book also give suggestions on how to foster safe relationships. An Amazon critique found the text all well and good until put in practice – the women who often fall for these narcissistic unsafe people, for example, don’t need someone else to tell them what else is wrong with their relationships but rather help them to be whole first and then work on building stronger relationships.
The Accidental Husband played a similar card where Ms. Lloyd, in her books and on her show, painted many pictures of what is wrong with relationships today – not what is right and not how to find the right relationship. The movie was trying, I believe, to give more weight to the romantic, spontaneous side of life these self-help books often poo-poo. I found it all interesting though because this is a struggle I often feel when considering Safe People and my desire for fall-on-your face, head-over-heals, romanticism.
I suppose the only answer is what lies within yourself, so figure out what that is and go for it.
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