I’m not intending to bash movies altogether. Some, including some romances and romantic comedies, are quite charming and innocuous. But it’s time we stop taking our dating cues from Hollywood. It’s time to instead get a biblical view of dating, relationships and marriage. How do we do this? For starters, we read the Bible and see how God created relationships to function. We look at Jesus as an example. We pray for discernment. We practice humility, compassion and love in all of our relationships, including those with our family, friends and coworkers.

Pride and Prejudice ruined me.

I know I’m not alone. Women the world over know exactly what I’m talking about. We know the lines to repeat and scenes to replay in A&E’s 1995 movie version (the only true version) of the Jane Austen classic.

The Lizzy-overhears-Darcy-at-the-ball scene.

The Lizzy-dances-with-Darcy-at-the-ball scene.

The Lizzy-banters-with-Darcy-at-the-pianoforte scene.

The Darcy-proposes-but-Lizzy-tells-him-off scene.

The Darcy-pays-off-Wickham-but-doesn’t-take-credit-for-it scene.

The Darcy-against-all-odds-proposes-again-and-Lizzy-accepts scene.

The Lizzy-and-Darcy-kiss-as-they-drive-away scene.

Pride and Prejudice as a novel qualifies as classic British literature; Pride and Prejudice as a movie is pure romantic escapism.

So are its knock-offs: You’ve Got Mail, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and Life As We Know It, among others. Many filmmakers have acknowledged and tried to reproduce (most unsuccessfully) the power of Lizzy’s and Darcy’s tumultuous tale.

Why the obsession with P&P? Why is it the only movie I’ll watch over and over, scene by scene? Why is the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy irrevocably burned into my brain?

Because I desperately want it to be my story, that’s why.

I want a handsome, brooding, intelligent, emotionally distant but winnable, guarded but compassionate, truthful, just and impossibly rich bachelor to look my way. And if I’m being honest, I want him to not just look my way—I want him to really see me and then fall in love with me.

You see, I’m a bit like Lizzy. Average looking, past my prime (more than a few years beyond Lizzy’s 21), middle-class with few societal connections to speak of, hopelessly opinionated, and with more than one socially inept or embarrassing relative in my family tree.

But with Lizzy, Darcy eventually saw beyond all that.

He saw who she really was: a spunky, smart, self-starting girl with a true heart and a lot of common sense.

I like to think I’m that, too.

But whatever I am, the truth is that Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet were birthed out of Jane Austen’s imagination. They don’t exist. They are fiction.

As is my assumption that my story should look like theirs. Or like a movie script, period. Life’s just not like that.

Somehow we’ve been conditioned to believe—even expect—that our path to true love will unfold like a Hollywood plotline; that in a mere 90 minutes we’ll experience an intoxicating romantic ride that will unfold into an inevitable lifetime of marital bliss.

But life isn’t a blockbuster rom-com. And neither is the path to marriage. I think Hollywood has duped us, encouraging us to believe that true love is “out there” if we’ll only “believe” (yeah, thanks, Disney).

This is nonsense. To this point, here are a few of the movie myths I’ve fallen for in my own dating history, along with why I think they’re a key reason for so many relationship stops, starts, stall-outs and general toxicity and dysfunction.

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