8 films and TV shows proving love isn't about timing
Here's what I keep coming back to: timing is an excuse. The stories that actually destroy us are the ones where everything is wrong, the city, the phase of life, the other person they're dating, and the love wins anyway. It just sits there, patient and devastatingly certain, waiting for everyone to catch up. These 8 films and shows prove it.
The Notebook
Allie and Noah get one summer. Then her parents separate them, his letters never arrive, and they both spend years trying to be okay with other people. Years. And it still doesn't take. The Notebook is basically a feature-length argument that you can't logic your way out of the right person.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Belly has loved Conrad her whole life and it's never been straightforward. He's grieving, he's distant, she's choosing Jeremiah, the timing is always off in some new and specific way. But the summers keep pulling them back. There's a reason this show has the yearning it does. We are all Belly, waiting for the universe to just cooperate.
One Day
Emma and Dexter meet on July 15th, 1988. We check back in on that same date every single year. They are consistently, almost impressively, in the wrong phase of life to be together. But the love is there on every single one of those days, even when they're pretending it isn't. One Day is the show that made me fully stop believing in bad timing as a concept.
Normal People
Connell and Marianne keep missing each other. Not because the love isn't there but because someone always flinches at the wrong moment, doesn't say the thing, makes the safe choice. And then they circle back. Normal People is about how the right person can also be the terrifying person, and how that doesn't make the pull go away.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel and Clementine pay a company to erase each other from their memories. Completely. And they still end up meeting in a parking lot. If that isn't the most unhinged proof that real love doesn't care about your circumstances or your choices or your timeline, I don't know what is. This one lives in my brain rent-free.
About Time
Tim can literally travel in time and what the movie figures out is that it doesn't matter. You could have every moment perfectly arranged and it still comes down to choosing the person every day. About Time sounds like a romantic fantasy but it's actually arguing that love is a decision, not a window.
Every Year After
Childhood friends, one that got away, a second chance that probably shouldn't work. Every Year After just dropped and it is exactly what it sounds like: a slow burn that's been simmering for years. This is the one on the list that's going to have you texting your group chat about it by episode three.
Love, Rosie
Rosie and Alex are each other's person and they know it and the universe just refuses to cooperate. Wrong pregnancy, wrong continent, wrong relationships, wrong moment for about fifteen years straight. Love, Rosie is the friends-to-lovers slow burn that set the standard for every one that came after it. If you haven't cried at that ending, you watched it wrong.
