Does One Day paint an unhelpful picture of 'the one that got away'?
Almost-loves of your life are an intoxicating idea. But my litmus test for prospective partners remains: what have they done for you lately?
Like everyone (in my specific, Netflix-shackled bubble), I adored One Day. The new adaptation of David Nicholls’ 2009 novel hit the streaming platform earlier this month, launching a thousand tear-stained selfies. Oh, Em and Dex, why do you do this to us?
G and I were physically unsettled by the ending well into the next day. It sparked a strange mood in the house: is all of this ultimately pointless? Why couldn’t those two get their shit together earlier? I had a genuine emotional slump in the wake of it. (My compliments to the creative team.)
I have a bit of history with One Day. The year it came out, I’d had a crushing breakup with my first love, and we proceeded to mess each other around in the way that only 22-year-old exes can. After a few months apart, he read the book and had something of a come-to-Jesus moment, writing me a letter (an actual, handwritten letter) to say the book had made him realise we were meant for each other and that he’d handled everything badly. It would have all been very romantic if I hadn’t already been embroiled with my next “great love” (reality: toxic workplace mistake) and completely uninterested in reviving things.
It does sound rather like a chapter of the book, only we didn’t go on to torment each other for another decade (and I remain blissfully alive and well away from London’s cycle lanes). What that ex-boyfriend - and all of us One Day fans - were so intoxicated by was the idea of the one that got away. Missed connections, what could have been. When things aren’t going well for us, it’s so easy to reach for the idea of that last person that made you feel something, conveniently forgetting the bad and the ugly: the arguments and clashing communication styles, the times you took them for granted and that weird sex thing that they did. (I know at least one of my oldest girlfriends is cackling right now.)
Because the one that got away… well, they got away. And usually, that’s for a reason. As I’ve got older, and swung from unhealthy situationship to unhealthy situationship, I’ve really learned to value consistency, effort and just plain presence. The ones that are there more than they’re not there. When I was dating, I’d often prioritise interesting looking men with curly mops of hair, who read feminist novels and saw their real career as “making music” (alongside their insurance broker day job). They were thrillingly inconsistent and addictively unpredictable. If we kept just missing each other’s single spells, or only declaring our interest via text at 2am on a Sunday morning while the other was snoring soundly, that only made it all the more heightened and romantic.
Yes, I was a dummy: and I’ve watched so many of my bright, glamorous female friends do the same. These days, my litmus test for prospective partners is: what have they done for you lately? Dexter may have the same sense of humour as Emma and value her dry Yorkshire wit, but was he really there for her during, y’know, the alive years? Did he go and see her crap touring plays by the company in the grubby minivan? Did he make her a hot water bottle when she was crabby with PMS? Did he ever once take the Megabus to visit her in Leeds?
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For me, if you don’t love someone enough to do the everyday and the less-than-cinematic moments (the funerals, the sickness bugs, the bad fringes), you’re probably not a Great Love. Women in their 20s can sustain a crush for years based on one incident of skinny dipping in a pretty Greek bay, optimistically ignoring the ghosted voicemails and the snarky drunk comments. Are we making too much of Dexter? And is he even supposed to be a soulmate, or just the flawed guy who fumbles a really great woman over and over again?
When you’re dating, there’s a persisting mirage of the man who will (One Day) be perfect, because he’ll be ready for you. He’s so near-perfect, the sort of person you know you should be with, he just doesn’t actually want to be with you. So you hang on. And you wait. Maybe after he sees you in this light, in this dress, at that mutual friend’s wedding, holding a baby, he’ll see all of your charm and beauty and he’ll move past almost-loving you and just love you. One Day really fuels this kind of magical thinking. But again: what has he done for your lately?
I’m just not sure that you can almost be the love of someone’s life. Young men will often declare that if you were both a bit older, or lived a bit closer, or weren’t both committed to someone else, this could really be something. But it isn’t quite something if you aren’t giving the time and the energy to it. The doing of love - the romancing, the dating, the meeting family, the doing nothing together - not the talking about it, is what makes a great love great.
Three great culture fixes on missed connections:
BOOK: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow I know many people read and loved this book last year, but if you missed it, I highly recommend. It’s a years-long saga in the same vein as One Day, but with a distinctly 21st-century tech and gaming slant. It touches on sexism, neurodivergence and disability as well as how the virtual world can help humans connect; but it’s also just really bloody original and heartwarming.
FILM: Someone Great This fun New-York-set rom-com handles the idea of a Great Love while accepting that some people are better off without each other. The vibe is: sometimes you have to shake off a relationship to become your best self. Gina Rodriguez and LaKeith Stanfield are gorgeous and nuanced as the central couple, with DeWanda Wise and Brittany Snow shining as Jenny’s ride-or-die friends. It’s silly and funny but always makes me well up at the end.
ALBUM: Melodrama, Lorde The near-perfect pop song Supercut by Lorde appears in Someone Great, which leads neatly on to this album about tempestuous love and heartbreak. From the gentle sorrow of Liability (They say, ‘You're a little much for me/You're a liability’) to the seething fury of Green Light (She thinks you love the beach, you're such a damn liar), this rollercoaster of an album is ideal for sweating out the relationship withdrawal.