Not really. I have to admit I really enjoy them.

It could be because I hope that, someday, I’ll meet a man that will make me feel just like the lead character makes the female lead (and every straight female, bi, or gay man in the audience) feel. Or, maybe, I’m expecting to get through fictional others the satisfactions I am unable to attain in real life. It could also be that I just watch them to remind myself that all I’m seeing is a work of fiction and that, although some things do happen, it’s not reality but an ideal and I shouldn’t feel bad because they are feeding my head and desires with unreal possibilities.

Then, there comes a movie, or a part in most, that happens to have a leading man that reminds you of someone in your life; the expressions they make, the conversations you have had, the moments you have gone through…Crossing that comfortable line between reality and fiction that you had wished to make wider, not transparent…and then wonder, why?

Why don’t we get sequels more often for romantic comedies? What really happens next? Why do they always leave it at the fairy tales’ ending “and they lived happily ever after”? What happens…is there any cheating, heartache, breakup? Has each found the person they would not mind spending the rest of their lives with and just die together from old age?  Do any of the people that write, make, perform these illusions go through that happily ever after, or even yearn it like some of us?

I watch romantic comedies, because I like them…they make me laugh and I would take that over tears every single day. But sometimes a good laugh has its price and sometimes that price is being reminded of good memories that make you smile. Memories you just want to repress because those smiles turn into frowns brought upon by other memories which happen to be attached to those that cross the fiction line.

Why a guilty pleasure? Because the frowns do not keep me from watching. Sometimes I even do it on purpose…I yearn to be reminded, secretly (or does this make it openly?), of those feelings that did not only trigger my passion but also an unbelievable bliss…Those I had always heard about in songs, read about in books, watched on TV and movies, but never thought of them as anything other than fiction until they happened. But, I yearned for them…I guess I still do…

So, now I’m admitting to be a hopeful romantic inside that iron box I have succesfully built over the years so no one can hurt me. Too bad I left a little hole to watch where I was going…

So, thank the gods for romantic comedies?  Sure. Pleasure through guilt can be very satisfying.