1/3 column: Meet me in the middle

File this one under No Kidding: researchers say romantic comedies are bad for real-life romance.

The folks at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh think cornball flicks like “Serendipity” and “Maid in Manhattan” reinforce people’s unrealistic expectations about relationships.

My husband gives me a lot of grief for eschewing loopy love stories. Both he and our daughter are big fans but I pass. It’s not that I hate moonlight and roses — I wore out three Cinderella books as a girl — but I grew up, got married and quickly learned that I could either be bitter about getting a drill for Valentine’s Day or I could speak up. Never have power tools made a person so empowered.

I once met a woman who had written more than 100 romance novels. She confessed to me that she’d lift whole sections from one book to the next, changing names and locations to suit the new story line. That’s how I feel about “When Harry Met My Big Fat Pretty Notting Hill Woman in Seattle”, or whatever they’re calling it this season.

We watch a lot of movies around the holidays. On New Year’s Eve we went to see “Marley & Me”.

“The only time I believed Jennifer Aniston’s character was when she was yelling,” my husband said as we left the theater.

A younger me might have thought: “Why, because that’s what wives do?” A Julia Roberts character would have stormed off, persuaded only of the remark’s innocence after her man staged an elaborate apology — maybe including an elephant and the Jackson State University Marching Band — or when he rescued her from sharks.

But as a wise woman married eight years and counting, I didn’t do any of that. They will never make a movie about Sam and me.

We’ve never written the other’s name in the sky. We don’t storm out into the rain, or tear at our clothes and gnash our teeth. If my husband is driving me mad, it’s probably because he ate all the cheese or left some project half finished, not because he sold drugs or ran off with my sister. That’s good for me.

You know what I liked about “Marley & Me”? The middle. The parts about how life just sort of happens and you adjust.

A lot of us have crafted ambitious plans in these first, tentative days of the new year. We’ll lose a million pounds, run a marathon, climb a mountain, write a book. We’ll find someone and live happily ever after. When we don’t, we’ll feel like failures. We’ll start again next year with a new plan and new resolve.

But forget for a minute about auspicious beginnings and fairy-tale endings. There’s so much more in the middle.

Jennifer Hemmingsen’s column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact the writer at (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com