Michael Green: My wife is an alcoholic. Best person I ever met. She has 600 different smiles. They can light up your life. They can make you laugh out loud, just like that. They can even make you cry, just like that. That's just with her smiles. You'd have to see her with her kids. You'd have to see how they look at her when she's not looking. To think of all the things she lives through, and I couldn't help her.
Alice Green: Maybe helping wasn't your job.
Michael Green: Well, it wasn't. See, I love her. And I tried everything, except really listening, really listening, and that's how I left her alone. I was so ashamed of that, and I couldn't even tell her. Maybe if I tell her, she'd love me.
Alice Green: Or more. She would have loved you even more. I think you should tell all this stuff to your wife.

- When a Man Loves a Woman (1994).

It's official. I am a couch-romantic.

I really can't help it. I wish I wouldn’t tear up when I hear sappy lines from sappy movies like the above, but I did. What's coming over me? First Sepet, now this. Gosh.

But I have to admit, I loved watching When a Man Loves a Woman on Star Movies. If you try really hard to remember (and if you do, you are either part of the "Mushy Movies Members Club" or a freakish movie buff), Meg Ryan was this alcoholic-cum-wife, while Andy Garcia was the lovey-dovey husband who tried to help. And if you read the line above, by his standards, he failed. Factor in two kids, their jobs, pride, ego and stress, and you have yourself your typical hardships-in-relationships chick flick.

Nothing revolutionary. But I just absolutely adore the film.

For one thing, there are just these gem quotes that made me think that, behind all the gloss of romance, the effort needed to make a relationship work is monumental. Like when Alice looks at Mike, all exasperated after her darling husband tried again to offer help, and whispers: " I think I could love you again if you could, for once, say 'I don't know.'". Or when they get into this heated argument, and Alice just shouts: "Fuck that! Fuck making it better. It's not getting better! I don't know how to make it better and I swear to God you don't either!" Or this moment with Alice and her rehabilitator, who shares about her own recovery from alcohol, and her struggles with her own husband.

Alice: So, everything turned out ok, right?
Nurse: Not really...I divorced him the next year (Both start laughing).

So real.  Oh so painfully real.

It made me think about my previous relationships, especially the most recent one. I guess I was just like Mike - thinking that my role was to always try and fix things in her life, to be the always-dependable, 'you can count on me'-kinda guy. Given the hell she went through in life, I thought that was what she needed. And when it turned out I wasn't that kind of guy, I couldn't take it, and scrammed.

Silly me. If only I listened to her, and embraced Grace. If only I learnt to walk through doubt, and understand it's always going to be there. But then, as people like to say, the past is forgotten. The hard part is believing in a second chance. And a third. And a millionth.

"It's horrifying how much you can hate yourself for being low and weak and he couldn't save me from that. So I turned it on him; I tried to empty it onto him. But there was always more, you know. When he tried to help I told him that he made me feel small and worthless. But nobody makes us feel that, we do that for ourselves. I shut him out because I knew if he ever really saw who I was inside, that he wouldn't love me. And we're separated now, he's moved away, and it was so hard not to beg him to stay. And I don't know if I'm going to get a second chance but I have to believe. That I deserve one. Because we all do."  - Alice.

Man, this is just too much. Is there a cure for this? I need to follow Y's lead - give me that DVD of XXX2. I need to see a freaking building blown to smithereens.