Growing up in the 80s and 90s, Gen X girls absorbed all sorts of weird ideas about love and relationships.
From teen magazines to rom-coms starring Molly Ringwald, we collected relationship beliefs like we collected jelly bracelets – colorful, abundant, and ultimately disposable.
Looking back now, it’s hilarious to think about all the relationship myths we once held as gospel truth.
1. Playing Hard to Get Was the Ultimate Strategy
Remember the three-day rule? You’d wait precisely 72 hours before returning a call from your crush, convinced this magical time period would make them want you more.
Turns out honest communication works way better than pretending to be busy every Friday night. Those mind games we thought were so clever just led to confusion and missed connections. Real relationships thrive on authenticity, not calculated waiting periods designed to drive someone crazy with desire.
2. If He’s Mean, He Secretly Likes You
“He only pulls your hair because he likes you!” The classic playground wisdom that followed us into our teen years. We’d analyze every insult and prank as secret evidence of undying love, convinced that meanness was just affection in disguise.
Spoiler alert: people who care about you actually treat you nicely! That guy who called you names in math class wasn’t hiding his crush – he was just being a jerk. This misguided belief normalized disrespect and set us up to accept poor treatment as a form of twisted flattery.
3. You Need to Change Yourself to Be Lovable
Magazines bombarded us with quizzes like “Is Your Personality Scaring Him Away?” and “10 Ways to Be the Girl He Can’t Resist.” We believed we needed complete personality makeovers to be worthy of love, hiding our interests and opinions to become the perfect girlfriend.
What a waste of energy! The right person actually loves your authentic self – quirks, strong opinions, and all. Those teen magazine personality overhauls just taught us to shrink ourselves and hide what made us unique.
Finding someone who appreciates your true self is way more satisfying than maintaining an exhausting facade.
4. Marriage Was the Ultimate Achievement
We grew up believing a wedding was the finish line in the relationship race. Success meant landing a husband before 30, preferably with a diamond big enough to require its own zip code. Career goals? Important, but secondary to finding Mr. Right.
Fast forward to reality: marriage is neither an achievement badge nor a solution to life’s problems. Many of us discovered that personal fulfillment comes from various sources – careers, friendships, creative pursuits, and yes, sometimes partnerships.
Happiness isn’t measured by marital status or ring size but by living authentically on your own terms.
5. Men Don’t Have Real Feelings
“Men are from Mars” thinking convinced us that guys were emotional deserts – they didn’t feel things deeply, didn’t need emotional connection, and certainly didn’t cry at movies. We thought their emotional range went from hungry to angry with nothing in between.
Boy, were we wrong! Men experience the full spectrum of human emotions but were often taught to suppress them. The guys we dated weren’t emotionless robots – they were fellow humans with hearts, fears, and insecurities.
This myth didn’t just hurt men; it robbed us of deeper connections by lowering our expectations for emotional intimacy.
6. Jealousy Proves They Really Care
We once believed jealousy was the ultimate proof of love. If he checked your pager for messages or got upset when other guys talked to you, it wasn’t controlling – it was romantic! Movies and music reinforced this idea constantly.
In reality, intense jealousy is about insecurity and control, not love. Healthy relationships are built on trust, not surveillance operations worthy of the CIA. Those “romantic” jealousy scenes from 80s movies look downright creepy when viewed through today’s lens.
True love feels like freedom, not like being constantly monitored for loyalty violations.
7. You Must Be Experienced Yet Chaste
The bizarre paradox of our youth: be simultaneously sexy and experienced but also pure and innocent. We were supposed to magically know how to please a partner without ever having practiced or discussed intimacy openly.
What nonsense! Good physical relationships involve communication, learning, and sometimes awkward moments. The pressure to be sexually perfect without education or practice left many of us feeling inadequate and confused.
Turns out, honest conversations about desires and boundaries create much better experiences than trying to live up to impossible Madonna-whore standards from music videos.
8. Your Soulmate Will Complete You
“You complete me” wasn’t just a cheesy movie line – it was our relationship gospel. We believed our perfect match would arrive to fill all the empty spaces in our lives and personalities. Half-people searching for their missing pieces.
Reality check: healthy relationships involve two whole people choosing to build something together, not incomplete humans seeking their other halves. Expecting one person to fulfill every need creates impossible pressure and inevitable disappointment.
The most satisfying partnerships happen when both people have full lives and choose to share them, not when they’re desperately seeking someone to make them whole.
9. Asking for What You Need Makes You Needy
The cool girlfriend never asked for anything – she was magically low-maintenance and understood that expressing needs was basically relationship suicide. We prided ourselves on being “not like other girls” who had actual requirements and boundaries.
Fast forward to wisdom: clearly communicating needs is the foundation of healthy relationships, not a character flaw. Those relationships where we silently hoped our partners would read our minds? They inevitably crashed and burned.
Being direct about your needs isn’t being high-maintenance – it’s being a mature adult who values herself enough to ask for what she deserves.
10. Your Body Had to Be Perfect to Be Loved
Heroin chic, Cindy Crawford, and Kate Moss – the impossible body standards of our youth convinced us that only perfect physical specimens deserved love. We starved, crunched, and obsessed, believing romantic happiness was directly proportional to waist size.
What a colossal waste of mental energy! People find partners and fall in love across the entire spectrum of body types. The hours we spent worrying about thigh circumference could have been spent developing talents, pursuing dreams, or simply enjoying life.
Love has never been contingent on looking like a supermodel, despite what every magazine cover tried to tell us.
