I’m not ashamed to say I’ve got my own issues with relationship ambivalence. From my own hopelessly sentimental, blind-eye refusals to give up on love to my unconscious strategies designed to resist love, I’ve searched for the middle ground between hopeless romanticism and ambivalent attachment. So I’ve taken notice over the years of how many of our movies focus on our “come here, go away” relationship struggles. In fact, A Place In The Sun showed us The Way We Were so that When Harry Met Sally a Whole Wide World opened up to Jerry McGuire, who finally proved that Something’s Gotta Give, convincing us that Never Again would we let An Officer And a Gentleman drive us Out of Africa only to fill us with regret Before Sunset. Don’t worry, you haven’t suffered a stroke. That was just a small sampling of how many of our classic and modern films feature our ambivalence about love.

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