I remember 500 days of Summer coming out about ten years ago, it was the film that introduced me to my love for Zooey Deschanel & Joseph Gordon-Levitt, that also made me happy because it wasn’t a typical love story. I loved everything about that film, I loved the way it had everything in a jumbled order so you could see positive & negative sides of the relationship in a random order, my favourite part about it was that it taught me that sometimes you can love someone but not be right for them.

Then after watching a mini essay on Amazon Prime ‘the weight of expectation’ a man’s observation of the film, I decided to get the film out again & watch it, for the first time in possibly about 7-8 years! My God, the film turned out to be a massive eye opener when I watched it again.

Do you ever watch a film, love it, but then forget a lot of the main roots of the film, then rewatch it years later and learn something totally different?

That is basically what happened to me when I watched it again. My mind was blown. What really fascinated me most though, was how much the film taught me about myself.

Now we all know the main plot of the story, Joseph’s character Tom becomes obsessed with a girl called Summer. He is convinced that she is his soulmate & embarks on a relationship with her, only to get dumped & find out that in less than 500 days of knowing her, she married someone else.

I remember when I first watched the film years back, although I adored Zooey Deschanel (still do), I thought her character Summer was a bit of a bitch, & my perception was that she played Tom & messed him around. However watching this again, I actually see that it’s not Summer who’s in the wrong. In the film, Summer makes it very clear to Tom that she doesn’t want anything serious, she asks him if that’s okay & he plays it cool about it (clearly thinking he can change her mind), when you rewatch the film you actually notice that Summer doesn’t actually go hot & cold with him, not really. She is always pretty much the same with him. He just fixated on this idea of her & sees her differently in the beginning. He doesn’t see the signs that it will never be more than a bit of fun.

Watching the film, I actually learnt that, I was a lot like Tom in real life. When I look at my failed relationships, I realise that, I didn’t really love the people I was with. I loved the idea that they could be the one , I lived in a total fantasy scenario. I had these extreme expectations that the guy I was seeing would turn out to fall madly in love with me, depend on me, & vice versa, but it was never really about them as a person, it was just this deluded idea that we could be perfect & happy. Because I just wanted to mean something to someone.

The fact that I’ve bumped into my exes on numerous occasions like weddings, friends parties etc & sat there questioning what I saw in them justifies this fully. Because there was never a I love him. It was all about what I wished our relationship would be.

My anxiety played a nasty factor in a lot of my relationships as well, & I found myself constantly pestering men I dated for reassurance (you know the whole double texting, texting again if they don’t reply in 2 minutes, all that crazy crap), but whenever it inevitably ended, I moved on to another guy. Pretty quickly. Tom does this in the film too, the film ends (spoiler alert) with Tom meeting another girl (conveniently happens to be called Autumn – I see what you did there!) & you know that he’s going to start pursuing Autumn the same way.

I literally did this exact thing every time I got dumped or rejected. Instead of focusing on myself, my own wellbeing, being happy on my own, I would go straight on to Tinder or Bumble or go down the pub looking for a potential guy to start chatting to, it was always aimed initially as a distraction from the previous guy, but I’d always end up getting engrossed in the next guy too, validating my point about loving the idea of someone & not the person.

I had a lot of men in my life that were like Summer too. Always making it pretty clear that they ‘didn’t want a relationship’ & wanted to play the field, & I would pretend that was cool & hope they fall in love with me. Why do we do that? Why when someone tells us the honest truth to our faces do we still sit there & think challenge accepted ?! We need to respect that persons decision & either agree to the laid back terms or completely walk away. I think I just lived in a delusion because most of my close friends ended up in relationships with guys who were ‘friends with benefits’ to start with, so somehow fixated this false hope in my head when quite frankly, the men I was falling for were not the relationship type, & had I focused on falling for them as a person & not my fantasy, I would have nipped it in the bud from the start.

There are also a lot of things in the film that make me question my actual beliefs. I’ve always been one of those I believe everything happens for a reason, but I also think a lot of things are a coincidence types. I also share a mixture of Summer’s & Tom’s different views, I like to fixate in the idea of a soulmate, but I also sometimes find myself in Summer’s mindset near the start where she believes love is a fantasy. I think when you have had a pretty rubbish love life & a lot of bad luck in general you naturally become a rather cynical human, that’s just the way I am.

But this film generally taught me about how people should & shouldn’t be in a relationship. Joseph is completely on the ball when he expresses that his character is in a selfish fantasy & it is not healthy for anyone to be in that mindset. It’s taught me that going forward I need to be more aware of what I am chasing.. am I chasing the guy because I like him, or am I chasing the fantasy of what I want him to be? When a guy tells me he doesn’t know what he’s looking for or he’s not into serious, or he’s unsure, that means I need to let it go – if he’s not sure about what he wants, it means he’s not sure about me. I need to accept that & move on.

I think as a whole, what we need to take from the way we are, or more importantly, what I need to take from all this, is that you are never going to be completely happy with someone until you can be happy in yourself. Until you fulfil yourself no one is going to come close. The moment you are depending on another person to make you feel important or happy, is the moment you need to take a step back. I know it is easier said then done, I have literally been addicted to the idea of men & dating & relationships since I was about 16 years old, it is very hard to suddenly shut your mind off from fantasy land & accept things as they are (I blame the over the top romantic comedies for our false ideas personally). But we have to focus on us.

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I am currently on a dating hiatus & this film has literally justified to me exactly why I should be doing so right now. I need time to learn to love myself & focus on what I really want & what makes me happy, I don’t need a man to complete my life. I need to make sure that I am fully okay with myself & my needs before I start dating someone again.

Because when I do date someone again because I know eventually I will, I want the reason to be because of who they are & what I like about them. Not because I’m lonely.