Things always look better on the other side of the fence, don’t they?
You better believe it!
Some things just seem to get better with time…even if they don’t deserve it. And we’re about to get an earful about what people think about this!
AskReddit users talked about things they think should stop being romanticized. Let’s take a look.
1. Nothing pretty about it.
“Eating disorders. It’s not beautiful and tragic, it’s just a lot of gross sh*t.
Like hoarding bags of chewed up food under your bed. Taking laxatives until you p*ss water out of your *ss and you’re so dehydrated you have to go to the hospital. Having dentures/implants at 30 because your teeth rotted out.
Walking around in public not realizing you have vomit in your hair, which by the way, is falling out by the fistful. I remember reading one horrifying story from an ER nurse who had a patient who was literally vomiting faeces because her stool was so impacted due to constipation from her anorexia. Imagine vomiting your own sh*t.
And that’s not including risks like heart failure, life-threatening arrhythmias, brain atrophy, gastric rupture…
There’s nothing pretty about eating disorders.”
2. Scary.
“Stalking.
In movies, if person A likes person B, it becomes ok to stalk them like crazy, showing up uninvited to profess their love.
In reality, that’s totally creepy and illegal. The issue is that people without experience doing these things in real life see the movies and emulate what they see.”
3. Creepy stuff.
“Serial killers.
I understand the curiosity but the fan mails and brides of serial killers is beyond my level.”
4. Sleep is good for you.
“Not “needing” 7-8 hours of sleep. So many people treat not sleeping as a badge of honor.
In reality, the science is pretty clear that getting less than 7 hours impairs your cognitive functioning and productivity. A lot of sleep-deprived people dispute it, but those in a sleep-deprived state aren’t reliable evaluators of their own performance!
If you actually can’t function in the morning without coffee, you’re probably not getting enough sleep. And yes, that’s a lot of people.
If you want to learn more about this, there’s an excellent book titled “Why we sleep” by Matthew Walker, a world-leading neuroscientist and sleep expert.”
5. Only the lonely.
“Being lonely.
When I was young I thought that the lonewolf grizzled tough guy was everything it meant to be truly masculine and cool. So much so that I emulated that idea into adulthood. Thinking people would see me as cool and manly.
Thing is I have no idea if anyone sees me that way because I have noone to hangout with.
I isolated myself to this point that the most interaction I have with people face to face is well. At a drive through getting coffee or a meal.
Let me tell you it doesn’t matter how many crunches or push-ups you can do how good-looking you are or if you’re charming as hell. Not unless you actually know people and make friends and you can’t do that if you’re completely isolated.
F*ck being lonely. I really wish I could go out and just make friends like when I was young.”
6. This one right here.
“War.
For real. I saw an add the other day that I thought was for call of duty at first.
Turns out its for the army.”
7. Sad.
“Gambling.
Because gambling isn’t about James Bond playing Baccarat in Monte Carlo.
It’s about sad, addicted people desperately playing slot machines and losing money they don’t have.”
8. Interesting.
“Loyalty to the company–it’s not a good thing. My husband worked for one particular company for nearly 20 years and towards the end, they were really treating him like sh*t.
He was actually scared to try and find another job because he was afraid his coworkers would hate him afterwards for leaving. It didn’t help that for a period of about 2 years prior to his quitting, he’d done a ton of interviews for similar positions only to find out they were going another way, or had just entered a hiring freeze or some other bullsh*t response.
My own thoughts on that were that he was TOO experienced and wanted too much money BECAUSE of that experience. With one rejection after another, it broke him down and he felt like he would never be able to find another job.”
9. There’s a difference.
“Difference between having depression and being depressed.
I have a few ailments myself which have also taken my life. It’s not a “hobby.”
One of which is BPD which has ravaged my relationships with people for years.
Wake up hating my life, missing work way more often than my peers. Go into work and everyone wonders what’s wrong with me. I’m isolated and no one confronts me directly. Then the friendships I had tend to fade because I set idealizations that this person is amazing and such a great friend.
Then they make a slight slip up; that is sometimes even not their fault. It’s some high weird expectation I expected of them. I feel betrayed and victimized and become a sh*tty friend. Drastically reduce contact with them and become miserable about them causing me to lose friends over a perceived slight. Can’t cope with my pain and cut myself sometimes to relieve stress.
Anyone wanna out a positive spin on that?”
10. True.
“Poverty.
Growing up poor and oppressed in a third world country and climbing your way out of this hell, it is not inspirational nor heartwarming. There is nothing beautiful about having to work until you break just so you can provide. No person deserves to live this kind of life.
Help, don’t romanticize the poor.”
11. Not a joke.
“Mental disorders.
This so much. It’s like people are in a race to see how many “disorders” they have. It’s been fetishized by people.
So tired of the self diagnosing.”
12. Ugh.
“Being stressed and exhausted from work.
It turns into what we call ‘pain olympics’
“I’m exhausted, I worked 65 hours this week..”
“Omg that’s nothing, I worked 75 and I’m doing just fine!”
The worst.”
13. Not glamorous.
“Chronic illness or life altering diseases. People glamorize being sick in books and movies as a lesson in strength, positive outlook, and acceptance.
Great values to learn but it completely ignores the constant pain, isolation, and fear that sick people face daily. People pass around feel good stories about “inspiring” people living their lives to the fullest while terminally or forever ill to make healthy and able bodied people feel grateful for what they have.
I, nor anyone else in this community that I know, don’t want to be your positive inspiration p*rn. This life is hard and we wouldn’t choose it so stop using it for stories/media that you get to be emotional over then walk away from.”
14. In reality…
“Depression.
There’s nothing romantic about not showering for three days and forgetting what it’s like to be able to feel things.”
15. Don’t be a creep.
“Stalkers.
When a person says they are not interested in you, walk away. They are not playing hard to get. They are not pretending. They are not sending mixed-messages.
Don’t follow them around. Don’t call/message/email them. Don’t “accidently” run into them at different places. Don’t make them socialize with you.
No matter how hard Hollywood tries to sell it, there is nothing romantic about a guy who can’t take rejection or understand and accept the word “no”.”
16. Too much work.
“Overworking.
The people at my job seem to make it a contest of who sacrifices more for their job. Who works the most overtime? Who does things off the clock for work more? Etc.
It’s bullsh*t.
I have a life and a family I want to prioritize.”
17. It’s not real life.
“Many romance stories focus on a male character who is ‘broken’ and is ‘fixed’ by the female protagonist.
Women craft a relationship standard from this – a man cannot be for her if he is not damaged.”
18. Not fun for everyone.
“High school.
There is so much more bullsh*t in high school but the media decides to romanticize one TEENSY part of it.
Take it from a high schooler, romance is such a tiny part of it that it’s barely even recognized anymore.”
19. So true.
“Alcoholism.
I am thankful I never made it such a habit that it ever became a problem, but between the commercials urging you to buy beer and liquor, the movies and television that treat binges as always fun and always s*x-filled, and the general cultural passivity with it (the fact I can drink with my parents no problem but will likely never, EVER smoke weed with them) is just painfully misleading.
I think of the people who truly struggle with alcoholism and how much it must pain them to watch TV or even just be out anywhere it is served. Maybe someone with that sort of perspective here can correct or enlighten me, but it just seems like a very difficult world to recover from alcohol dependency.
To clarify, I’m not anti-drinking. I used to drink on a weekly basis, whereas now it’s on special occasions only. Idk, so many things about it just don’t appeal to me anymore.
The emotional and relational problems…the trauma drunk behavior can bring, the wake-up headaches that make your head feel split in half, the vast amount of car accidents and fatalities inebriation causes, the numbing of your emotions (for better or worse), the amount of weight it makes you gain, the number of people who feel they cannot have fun without it.
To me it’s legitimately tragic just how much society encourages us, whether culturally or economically, to drink. I would argue cigarettes in the same vain, however I think society has generally embraced the anti-cigarettes mantra much more in recent years, though it’s still bad.”
20. Toxic.
“”Struggle love” or whatever you wanna call toxic relationships that slowly suck the life out of you and ruin your mental health. Relationships are not the misery olympics where you get a gold medal in the end if you put up with the most bullsh*t.
Your partner should make you happy at least 95% of the time, if it’s the opposite then you need to get the hell out of there instead of endlessly trying to ‘make it work’.
There’s nothing romantic or glamorous about wasting the only life you have with a loser who lies, cheats, uses, and abuses you.”
21. Not a good life.
“The Mafia.
Media makes them out to be bad*sses who are making money hand over fist.
Go watch Donnie Brasco and Al Pacino’s character. A life-long mafioso who drives a sh*tty car, has an average at-best apartment, and is constantly wondering if he’s going to get killed every day he wakes up.
Who the hell would want that life? But, a lot of these guys are Neanderthal morons who only know crime.”
22. Bad boys.
“The whole concept of “bad boys”.
Why is manipulative and abusive portrayed as hot? If anyone abuses you in any way, it’s not hot, it’s a serious problem.
For some reason, many movie/book plots overly romanticize the concept and it’s sick. Same thing goes for Stockholm Syndrome.”
23. Enough of this.
“The tortured artist.
I hate the idea of “only those that suffer can make great art”. Yes, there are people who have a rough life and make amazing things but that is a small percentage of people who actually get noticed. You can be smart, passionate, sincere, dedicated, or creative and make amazing art.
If we promote the idea that true art only comes from people who have suffered then that promotes the idea of self inflicting suffering while detracting from those who have made really amazing art but haven’t “truly suffered” for it.”
24. Yikes.
“Public marriage proposals, where the other party is basically shamed into accepting.
I heard someone on a podcast years ago telling their story about being proposed to on a cruise ship in front of hundreds. She said she leaned in, kissed the man, whispered in his ear “no but keep smiling”.”
25. Stay home.
“Working while sick.
JUST STOP! It’s not tough of you. You’re not taking one for the team. You’re probably about to take the whole team out.
I get it. Some workplaces have punitive policies for taking sick days (scary sidenote: like every single hospital I’ve ever worked). Some of us can’t afford not to work that shift.
But those are policy questions we should be pushing back on as soon as this administration is in the history books and we can finally get back to boring policy making again.”
26. Glamour and glitz.
“Celebrities. Fake people living fake, manufactured lives, yet the media insists that we care what they think, what they wear, who they’re voting for, who they’re f*cking.
All because they were born with some genetic gift, or born into the right family, or some other twist of fate thrust them into the limelight. It used to just be Hollywood types.
Now we have this whole generation of insta models, reality stars, and other “influencers” whose only contribution to society is their shameless self promoting bullsh*t. And people eat it up.
Meanwhile we have skyrocketing rates of teen depression and suicide because kids are bombarded with these impossible standards of beauty and popularity in their formative years.”
Now we’d like to get your thoughts.
In your opinion, what do people need to stop romanticizing?
Tell us what you think in the comments!
