Try to name three recent movies that did not have a romance story in the plot. Could you do it? I couldn’t. The media feeds us the lie that we need a man to complete us. During seasons of isolation, watching rom coms do not help with our loneliness and actually, can cause us to watch more pornography.
When I was a college student, I struggled with pornography and loneliness in singleness. I can imagine those struggles would be harder for present-day college students to walk through because of the isolation in online classes, remote learning, and working from home. It’s exhausting and triggering.
As a sophomore, I broke up with my boyfriend and felt extremely lonely. I spent my nights binge-watching Netflix, looking at porn and habitually masturbating, and my days eating ice cream on the couch. None of my coping mechanisms helped with my negative thoughts and feelings. Fed up with my life, I decided to try giving up romantic comedies for a whole month. I quickly learned that not only romantic comedies, but most movies and TV shows, had a romance plotline. And almost all of those plots included sex scenes.
