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Best Pop Culture Influences on Love and Relationships
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Generation X, Generation Y, Boomers, Millennials - whichever generation you’re part of - you no doubt have memories of songs, movies, books and any number of other media upon which you hang memories of significant points in your personal growth. Your first kiss, while the radio blared Journey’s “Open Arms.” The first time you danced slowly with another, maybe in the basement at your best friend’s house when you were 12, listening in a nervous sweat to Lionel Richie and the Commodores singing “Three Times A Lady.” Even the tight, knotty twang you felt in your stomach, envious of the devotion Mickey and Mallory Knox had for each other in “Natural Born Killers” - despite their other murderous tendencies.
Often what we don’t realize right away is that the significance of each of these visceral, background events act as psychological “hooks,” upon which we hang much of our relationship conditioning throughout our lives. Significant growth events tend to be recorded in our psyches with more detail than ordinary, daily events. And, we tend to attach things in our peripheral perception to these events, and these things act as instant reminders of these events throughout our lives - pulling us back to them with often surprising levels of detail, instantaneously, when we encounter them in our daily travels through our media-filled lives.
It's in this vein that I offer up the beginning of a list of the Best Pop Culture References That Influence How We Build and Survive Relationships. Everyone has one - and many of us have thousands: a snip of a movie, a quote, a song (or a part of a song) that transports them back to the first place where they attached that piece of their surroundings to the beginning of a new path of conditioning, or neural programming. These paths tend to influence the basic beliefs we hold about ourselves, and how we present ourselves to the world around us.
I believe many of us don’t take the time to retrace the path we started with these events. Yet when we do, we tend to find insights into relational hang-ups, behaviors, and beliefs that can help us grow, or in some cases repair, relationships in which we’re involved.
Quotes: Quotes tend to act not so much as inspirational events, but as guideposts on our way, most often set in our psyches by people we respect, due to their proximity to our own beliefs. Here are some of the best about love and relationships that I’ve seen:
“Every man needs two women, a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph.”
- Iris Murdoch
“My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.”
- D. H. Lawrence
"Why go out for hamburger, when you have steak at home?”
- Paul Newman (when asked if he had ever cheated on his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward)
"A simple 'I love you' means more than money."
- Frank Sinatra
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."
- Albert Einstein
“Which one did you pick? Which one picked you? It didn't matter, and it was all so sad. and when the picks were made, they never worked, they never worked for anybody, no matter what they said."
- Charles Bukowski (This one was actually very recently added by?a good friend of mine to my pantheon of guidance)
"Love is a haunting melody That I have never mastered. And I fear I never will."
- William S. Burroughs
Pop Song Lyrics: Next to the power of scents, pop songs may most quickly inspire the most profound and specific recollections of significant situations for us. They also tend to act as ingots of wisdom, by which many of us form some of our most profound beliefs.
These are some of the most effective in my experience with love and relationships, from a few artists that have had significant effects on how many of us define romantic love for ourselves:
Billy Bragg - British pop musician/modern troubador:
“For the facts of life are not man and wife,
They’re Man and Woman, sadly”
- from “The Myth of Trust”
“In the end, it took me a dictionary
to find out the meaning of “unrequieted”
- from “The Saturday Boy”
Leonard Cohen - Canadian poet, musician, writer, and spiritualist
“And you won’t make me jealous
If I hear that they sweeten your night
We weren’t lovers like that
And besides it would still be all right”
- from “The Sisters of Mercy”
“And I know from her eyes
and I know from her smile
that tonight will be fine,
will be fine, will be fine, will be fine
for a while.”
- from “Tonight Will Be Fine”
Conor Oberst - American indie pop musician/poet
“So if you wanna be with me
With these things there's no telling
We'll just have to wait and see
But I'd rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery”
- from “The First Day of My Life”
Ian Curtis - British singer from the punk band Joy Division
“When the routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
And resentment rides high
But emotions won’t grow
And were changing our ways,
Taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again”
- from “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Lou Reed - American artist and musician, originally part of The Velvet Underground
“Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I've had but couldn't keep.”
- from “Pale Blue Eyes”
I invite readers to respond with their best pop culture relationship and growth references. The fact that these hooks even exist as cultural references hints at the tendency of their effects to appear universal. They also tend to inspire thoughts and feelings that are intensely personal, and each of us has our own list. I’m sure many of mine will resonate with many of you - but I’m even more convinced that many of them won’t. And I know you all have your own.
Respond with your favorites by adding a comment to this column, or email me with your list. As responses come in, I’ll add them, and post updates that we can share.
If you'd like to have a more confidential discussion, email me!
