Does Following the Rules Result in Successful Relationships?

 

I remember learning relationship rules growing up from listening to love songs and watching multiple movies, in which a specific process was followed to successfully win over the man or woman one desired.

As I became obsessed with the movie John Tucker Must Die, in which I watched an innocent teen named Kate entice John with the help from John’s three exes, I realized to develop and maintain a successful relationship, I needed to adhere to the rules necessary to win over my man. These girls set out to trick John (as Rosalind tricked Orlando), in order to win him over. Kate got confused along the way because she believed she was supposed to be playing hard to get. The other girls scolded her because they claimed she was past the “playing hard to get phase” the moment she had John smitten.

I have noticed these relationship rules are not only existent in modern media but have been present since the works of Shakespeare. Each individual must follow the patterns in order to achieve love or display and prove the love they already feel.

In As You Like It, Rosalind challenges Orlando’s feelings of love by questioning characteristics as ones associated with love. Rosalind claims Orlando could not officially be in love because he does not portray the symptoms of an individual in love:

“A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and /sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which/ you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not—but I pardon you for that—but I pardon you for that, for simply you having in beard is a/ younger brother’s revenge. Then you hose should be ungar-/tered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your/ shoe untied, and everything about your demonstrating a careless/ desolation. But you are no such man. You are rather point-/ device in your accountrements, as loving yourself than seeming/ the lover of any other” (3.2.337-346).

Orlando does not meet these standards, and so he has a hard time convincing Rosalind it was him who posted his love poems on the tree. Rosalind believes she can cure Orlando from this love sickness and explains that she has expertise in curing other men by a specific process, “would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him,/ then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him,” (3.2.372).

Rosalind shows there is a procedure to undo a person in love just as individuals follow guidelines to win over their love interest. By adhering to the relationship rules, such as playing hard to get and then maintaining and continuing to follow the rules to keep them fascinated, individuals are likely to succeed in having a long-lasting relationship.