In the movie, Titanic, by James Cameron, lovely Rose De Wit, played by Kate Winslet, is forced to choose between her effete, elitist, rich, snobbish, dweeb fiancé Cal, or the all natural, refreshing, spontaneous, passionate, all-American, artiste Jack Dawson. Combined with the fact that we know that the ship does sink at the end, there is not a lot of suspense in this film.
This dilemma is so familiar you’d think we’d be bored with it by now. When Cal takes out a pistol and tries to remove his rival by force, we’re not surprised. He’s fighting a rigid Hollywood code: simple fisticuffs would never have sufficed.
How close to reality is this? All you women out there: did you choose your man because he was so spirited, imaginative, and “different”? Or because it looked like he could hold a job?
There is some reality to the idea. The phrase “Stockholm Syndrome” comes from a real life case of a Swedish kidnap victim falling in love with her captor. Wonder how that ended. But, other than that, in real life, does it happen very often? Let’s see. I’ll make a list of women I have known over the years. How many married for “passion” and how many married for logical, rational reasons that might include material benefits? I’m going to have to use numbers instead of names, to protect the guilty. I don’t know the answer myself– I’m just going off the top of my head here. Let’s define “passion” as a case in which the woman chooses someone of whom her family would disapprove for the usual reasons. “Rational” is when a woman chooses someone with a promising future, whom her family perceives as stable and mature and responsible.
| Woman #1 | rational |
| Woman #2 | rational |
| Woman #3 | rational |
| Woman #4 | rational |
| Woman #5 | rational |
| Woman #6 | rational |
| Woman #7 | passion (didn’t work out) |
| Woman #8 | passion (didn’t work out) |
| Woman #9 | rational |
| Woman #10 | rational |
| Woman #11 | rational |
| Woman #12 | passion (didn’t work out) |
| Woman #13 | rational |
| Woman #14 | rational |
| Woman #15 | rational |
Hmm. Do I see a trend? Maybe I think the ones whose marriages didn’t work out must have been passionate because everything else about those relationships now seems so illogical. Maybe those whose marriages seem rational now were married in the throes of a stormy passion they didn’t display to others.
There is another factor people who watch the Titanic and get all teary-eyed should consider: some women marry for passion, but immediately set out to make the relationship rational by pushing their husbands into new jobs, education, promotions, investments, mini-vans, quality time with the kids, and so on. So poor Jack Dawson, had he survived the sinking, probably would have taken a job as a commercial illustrator, or, more likely, a salesman, shortly after marrying lovely Rose and getting her pregnant. Picture Rose in 1955, wearing an ugly pant suit to a Dean Martin concert in Las Vegas, while Jack wanders off in an ugly loud shirt and pastel slacks to waste a few quarters on a slot machine. He bumps into a Marilyn Monroe look alike who gets friendly… and considers a moment of passion.