Dangerous questions

Every now and again I ask my boyfriend something he categorizes as a "dangerous question."  According to him, a "dangerous question" is a question that is either 1.) asked in a way that demands a particular answer or 2.) is a trap from which no good can come.  Some possible examples of past dangerous questions include: 1.) Do you think I contribute nothing to society, or am I just lazy?,  2.) Do you think my ass is growing in the shape of my new office chair?,  or 3.)  If you weren't my boyfriend, do you think you would think I'm mean or just annoying?  With this type of question, there's no safe way out.  But I'm not asking these questions because I want to trap him or start a fight.  I'm usually asking dangerous questions about things that I can only ask the people I trust the most.  Because I do worry about my usefulness and my ass.  Who doesn't?  And who else am I supposed to ask?

But of course, this makes me wonder about my relationship behavior because television and movies tell us how we (and our partners) are supposed to act.  I mean, most people on television don't quiz their partners about outlandish personal insecurities and then have a rational discussion about why those questions are unanswerable.  On television, the boyfriend either answers the question and gets in trouble or he invents a complex scheme to avoid answering anything, ever.  Also, on television, there is a lot less mutual enjoyment of one's partner's more embarrassing moments, like when I try to get my boyfriend to stop laughing about how much - and how loudly - I fart in yoga class.  I've been wondering, too, on this the Valentine's Day of 2010, how the media shapes how we understand relationships and what, if anything, we learn from the television about our hearts.

Let's look at some of the relationships that work* on television.

 

 

My standard for a relationship that "works" on television is that it becomes hard to separate reality from fiction.  For example, my mother is surprised every time she sees Alyson Hannigan with her real-life husband.  From these couples, I know we are supposed to laugh with our partners, display our insecurities, and have touching private moments that say who we really are as a couple.  Okay, I can deal with that.

Now, some of the more baffling/harder to explain relationships.

Okay, I'm not going to go the trite overweight/interesting-looking (you're welcome)-comedian-inexplicably-married-to-hot-woman route.  It's been done.  What these clips tell me is that sometimes you need to be told when to laugh.

Now, let's turn to the iconic teenage relationship.

Oh, the way he leans.

There's the Lemon.

Enough said.


And there's the one that I've spent many years trying to understand why people cared about it in the first place.

Just so you know, I was yelling "Stay on the plane!" So loudly during that finale that my dad came upstairs from the basement to see what was going on. After he sprinted into the room, my mom, sitting on the couch across the room told him, "She's mad because she thinks the story is dumb."  He got me some ice cream to calm me down.

In conclusion, I have no idea what television tells us about relationships except that that good ones make us care and the bad ones make us change the channel or hope for a swift cancellation.  If you can make that into something deeper, you're welcome to do so.