Essay On Romance In Sarah Dessen's This Lullaby

Romance in our society is portrayed as a fairy tale. Not easy but romantic, full of obstacles but adventurous. This is seen everywhere including movies and social media. In reality false perceptions of romance is seen as well but considering the fact that everyone is on their electronic devices a good majority of the time, it’s safe to say that it’s seen more on social media. Nowadays people post videos of them and their significant other. As you may have seen these videos contain dancing, singing and sometimes “relationship goals” They may be “goals” but are they reality? What is seen from the outside is not always what it is in the inside. People can play a lot of things off. People can make certain situations seem like something that it is not. “Happiness” can be another sign of sadness. That can be a person’s way of hiding how they really feel. This can be because there spouse won’t let them be or feel like they actually want.
In the book “This Lullaby” by Sarah Dessen, the romance does have some reality to it. The main character Remy has a decent outlook on how relationships can be. This outlook
comes from her mother who has been married several times. Therefore a certain part Remy’s life has changed several times. Her mom doesn’t seem too affected by it. She believes in giving love a second, third, fourth and fifth try. Little does her mother know, her daughter believes otherwise. Which in this day and age is understandable. She has a pretty pessimistic attitude towards life. This character trait does make her timid to go for and try new things. Because of the way her mother raised her, she’s always been very responsible. Even as a young child she was very mature for her age. In the book I noticed that she does almost everything for her mother’s wedding. She does a lot for her mother. She’s so busy writing her book that mostly everything is up to Remy.

Page eight of the book has a prime example “I double checked with the tux place and they’re expecting you this week for the final fitting. The rehearsal dinner list is pretty much set at seventy-five and the caterer will need a check for the rest of the deposit Monday.” She’s on top of everything. “I smiled at this, because he expected me to, but we both knew she wasn’t worrying at all about this wedding. She’d picked out her dress, decided on flowers, and pushed the rest off to me.” On page seven, Remy’s mother is known for starting projects and not finishing them. Kinda like her wedding, she did the very minimum and then left the rest up to Remy. But she accepts that responsibility and takes on the challenge. The boy that shows interest in her (Dexter) views relationships differently than she does. He wants her so he does whatever it takes to get her. He has an outgoing type of personality. Even with the fact that Remy isn’t on the same page as him as far as the love connection. “I just thought to myself, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural Chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were in fact meant to be together.” Remy feels otherwise. In the book she’s confused. He obviously felt something that she didn’t. “No, I did however, feel you slamming me into the wall” Dexter is pretty clumsy by the way. So it is seen that they met in a pretty unique way. In reality people really do meet and fall in love in a lot of unique ways. But do they always go on to live happily ever after without any real hardships throughout the relationship? The answer to that is no. That’s the difference between this book and what actually happens in the real world. Society has its way of making relationships out to be many different things. Celebrity’s relationships are made out to be full of glamor and excitement. That’s what’s shown on the outside right? But all the real stuff is never really seen unless the person themselves actually puts it out there or unless a paparazzi catches it. Like for example, Beyoncé dedicated an album “Lemonade “addressing the problems in her relationship. What you see is not always what it appears to be. Yes there was love but there were also the stages of Denial, Apathy, Emptiness, and reconstruction. Things that a lot of people in relationships go through today but isn’t seen. You never know what happens behind closed doors. All society does is confuse those who are watching and not experiencing. False perceptions are given out throughout a lot of thing that we see and use on a daily basis. These perceptions aren’t the same though. A movie on Television could show the fairy tale perception of how romance is and can be. But a reality TV show can give off the real stuff. The actual hardships, the fights, the arguments, the tears, the drama. All of it. Because it’s real. It’s what actually happens. But the way our society has of pretty much shaping romance into anything they want it to be it’s sometimes hard to believe what’s put out there for us to go off of. Romance in our society is portrayed as a fairy tale when really it’s all just give and take. It’s all about taking chances and hoping that the outcome is a good one. You know your heart but as far as knowing if the other person is taking the relationship as seriously as you are…it’s just a chance that has to be taken. The chance you take when you put your trust into one person. The things that we see on social media and on TV doesn’t show that. It only shows us what we’d like to see, what we want from a person. Not what will actually happen. This is why when two people get together, they tend to have different expectations of their spouse and what is expected. A good majority of us knows what we want out of a relationship.
But the misperceptions that our society gives about romance tends to throw us off track. We’re not given just one outlook or point of view of what romance is, we’re given several. Which is why men and women are never really on the same page when it comes to this type of thing. Romance is put out to be this sort of fairy tale when in reality it takes a lot of work to keep a relationship from falling apart. Not to mention dedication. When it comes to romance, emotions and feelings get involved. Giving your all to a person is hard to do because you don’t know what to expect. A person’s true intentions are never really clear in the beginning. So taking the chance of giving someone your all and not knowing what to expect in return is a scary thing. But it’s a chance that all of us take at some point in
time. Society tells us that romance is something that’s not taken as seriously as it should be. Relationships aren’t made to be easy. Only the strongest survive and only the dedicated ones are willing to do everything in their power to make it work. Romance isn’t perfect and neither are the people who are involved in it. The fact that those two people are willing to take on the challenge to stand by each other through thick and thin makes it perfect.