SOMETHING BORROWED: A Discussion

"We need to discuss."

That was the definite conclusion that we all came up with after watching the very divisive movie that is Something Borrowed. We can outline it into a number of chapters, in my mind the issues at hand are the following:

1. Is he or is he not into you.
2. Would you REALLY fall for your best friend’s guy?
3. Should a girl tell a guy how she feels at the risk of being too aggressive?
4. Should you fall for a really good friend at the risk of losing the friendship?

Let’s start with issue number one…

CHAPTER ONE

Is he or is he not into you? A.K.A. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.

“I didn't think someone like you could like someone like me,” -Rachel, Something Borrowed

We’ve seen it happen a million of times before. You spend time with a person, really have fun and spend those precious moments before you sleep, thinking, “Hey, he could really be into me too!” But that only consumes a few minutes, heck, a few seconds of your thinking time. For the rest of the night, you over exhaust yourself rationalizing and keeping your feet, and your heart pretty grounded. You start to think of reasons why he can’t like you. I mean, for a logical and emotionally beaten up person, you can think of an infinitely many reasons why he is only being a friend. Plus, this whole self esteem issue just can’t be shaken off, completely. I mean, for a woman lawyer, it is true that we have such high standards. Although we’d always dismiss this hypothesis by saying that we only want to end up with a decent guy, how we define this decent guy is a totally different story.

So, that’s where the problem starts, for someone who has high standards, we rarely get attracted to regular guys, and these non-regular guys, we feel, may be out of our league.  When we feel a connection, or when we feel that it may be safe to start assuming that there could be mutual attraction, you can depend on the fact that we have already jumped the gun by being our suspicious selves. We work hard to be THE GOOD FRIEND. Yes, we find safety in that not-so-comfortable net that is being in the FRIEND ZONE.

Then, a hot girl comes along, the fun, free-spirited one - she may be a friend, an acquaintance who just happens to be there to constantly remind us geeks that well, our guy can do better. I will let you in on a little secret - we also are easily discouraged. When we feel that the object of our affection has turned his attention to a hot woman, even for a millisecond, we act like it’s absolutely okay, like we never are offended or hurt – but believe you me, hell breaks loose in our hearts and minds. That’s when we start withdrawing ourselves from the conversation and let the hotter woman take center stage. We can be the most competitive bunch in a legal court, but we are such sissies in that court that is ruled by the heart.

Then we let it pass. We move on thinking that it was not worth fighting for in the first place. I mean, really, wouldn’t a guy do everything, and I mean everything to make the woman that he likes know that he likes her? There shouldn’t be any “Are you okay with this?”-like questions. If he really liked me, and even if I let him talk freely with the hotter girl, he should have reached for my hand to at least assure me that it is me whom he’d want to talk with. He should have sat beside me and poured all his attention on me, despite the hotter girl’s persistence.

In the ideal world, I guess. 

This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated."— Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed)

-To be continued-