The Daily Mail is calling it The Notting Hill Effect, but I’m calling it Hugh Grant Syndrome. Scientist have recently conducted research that proves people who watch romantic comedies are more likely to have unsatisfying love lives due to overblown expectations.

Researchers found that those who watched romantic comedies were more likely to believe in predestined love than those who preferred other genres of movie.

They were also more likely to believe that perfect relationships happen instantly, and were less likely to believe that couples need to work at relationships.

Watching just one romantic comedy is enough to sway people’s attitudes to romantic love, they found.

Dr Bjarne Holmes, who led the research, said: ‘We are not being killjoys – we are not saying that people shouldn’t watch these movies. But we are saying that it would be helpful if people were more aware and more critical of the messages in these films.

‘The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realise.’

[From Daily Mail]

The study maintains that people who watch romantic comedy films are more likely to believe in fate and soulmates, and tend to be more forgiving of cheating by their lovers. Score one for the Hugh Grant Syndrome name being more accurate.

The idea is that they set themselves up for a greater fall if they succumb to the ideals put forth in stories about instant and perfect love, even when they know better. Not only do they expect love to happen quicker, but they expect more from their partners as well. It easily becomes something neither party can live up to.

I think this phenomenom pre-dates Sleepless in Seattle by hundreds of years. Maybe we should blame Hans Christian Anderson, or even the Brothers Grimm. Actually, if you read Song of Solomon in the Bible, it sounds like a script for a present day romantic movie. We have rom-coms and previous eras had fairy tales. The idea of “happily ever after” has been entrenched in our psyches for as long as there have been stories to tell.

So I guess we can’t blame it all on Hugh Grant. I’m still blaming him for my attraction to English accents, though.

Hugh Grant is shown in a still from Notting Hill and in a more realistic candid out in London on 11/17/08. Credit: WENN