There’s a great movie that never really did get a lot of notice at the time (no idea why) called The Story of Us.
Ben and Katie or, Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfieffer. It came out in 1999 and it’s still one of those movies that I go back to all the time. When things are really awful in my personal life. Or when they’re really great. Or sometimes when life is just…life. Because it speaks such volumes to me and is one of the best representations of marriage I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, we all know relationships are hard. You have to work at them. But things that are worth it are worth working on. We’ve been through some real rough patches in our years and it’s during those times that we forget about all the great. But it’s easy to lose sight of the great even when things are neither spectacularly bad or spectacularly good. And there really has been some great.
I have two favourite scenes in this movie. Here, Katie and Ben are heading to pick up their kids from summer camp. They’re making awkward small talk in the car because after they get their kids, they’re going to have to tell them that while they were away at camp, Katie and Ben separated. They’re making small talk to avoid real talk because what comes next is going to be really, really hard. But then, Katie turns her head and looks at Ben and she doesn’t see a man she wants to live apart from, she sees their lives. The good, the bad and the ugly. She sees it all in one of the most perfect montages in a movie, ever.
Sorry for the choppy quality, it was the best I could find on YouTube.
And then, at the end of the movie, Katie realizes that her family is more important than a million fights and gives this speech:
I love how her own neurosis comes out in this speech. You can practically hear all the little things in it, the way she throws facts and history into it (that is probably a trait that drives Ben crazy) but that it is real and raw and the best kind of stuff when you break down a marriage into the two people who created it.
It’s great. I highly encourage you to see it if you haven’t yet. And then go find your partner, look at them and remember the sum of all their parts too. All those reasons that made your stomach turn into flip flops and butterflies way back at the beginning. And say I love you. And mean it.
Nuala Reilly: A Writer's Journey 