Just Not That Into You

I loved this movie before but now, after watching it in class and being able to apply it to things that we have learned, I like it even more. The first character I chose is Jennifer Aniston as Beth. She desperately wants to get married to her live-in boyfriend of 7 years, but he does not believe in marriage and refuses, until the end. The first thing that we can apply this to is cohabitation. We discussed how this usually ends badly for a couple. This movie wants everyone to have a happy ending, so the co-habitating couple do end up together, although this is probably unrealistic. Another thing we can apply this scenario to is the whole idea of marriage in general. Beth tells her boyfriend, Neil, that if he will not marry her then they should not be together. We learned that marriage is committing to someone for you entire life; it is not an isolated event. Neil promises that he loves Beth and will commit to loving her for the rest of his life even though they are not legally married. He believes marriage is just showing-off your relationship and that two best friends do not get a "friend" certificate to prove their friendship or make it valid, so why should two people in love? We talked about how the ceremony of marriage is for the couple to affirm their love for another in the presence of their loved ones and to provide a living example to the rest of the church of what marriage should be. Another character is GiGi. She desperately wants to be in a relationship with someone. She is willing to sacrifice her pride and dignity for a man to like her. She is also willing to get serious with a man almost immediately. After thinking that a man likes her, she is seen in the movie looking up places to have her destination wedding. This is not good dating practices, according to what we learned and discussed in this class. Although, it is good to put yourself out there in a relationship, it is unwise to put yourself out there too much and risk getting hurt by someone who does not want to start a serious relationship after meeting once. She is too set on finding a soulmate; she thinks every guy that she meets could be the man of her dreams. Men do not necessarily think this way; they think more in the short term. Eventually, GiGi does find a good partner who she can possibly share her life with.