I love you so much, I just don't like you anymore

I can safely say that I've watched countless romantic movies, both top-grade and shoddy ones. To judge them from an emotional aspect, they can be categorized into impressive pieces that you'd want to watch again and again and cringeworthy ones that make your toes curl up. But even for those that I've praised endlessly, I never actually revisit them unless they're work-related, like writing detailed reviews about them.

Except for “One Day”.

I first watched the movie back in 2011. Anne Hathaway was the main reason that drew me into the story because she's just too beautiful. Even in her recent work “The Idea of You,” she never fails to mesmerise me with her spellbinding beauty. Time seems to be particularly kind to her. But honestly, after watching the movie back then, I ruthlessly gave it a low rating— because of the story's unduly long time span, dense and jumpy plot and abrupt emotions. Overall, it left me puzzled. So, I revisited “One Day” purely to unravel my confusion; I was sure there was something wrong with it, but at the same time, I was convinced that I must have missed something. However, my second watch came years later, and sure enough, I eventually bumped up the rating. In my brief comment, I shared my realization that life is exactly how it is reflected in the movie— chaotic, incomprehensible, incoherent and devoid of causality logic and meaning.

As you know, there's the series adaptation of “One Day” released by Netflix earlier this year. It successfully made me fall in love with the couple, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, all over again, and even more deeply this time. Soon after, unsurprisingly, I finally picked up the original novel by David Nicholls! And for at least the next whole month, I was inextricably immersed in its melancholic atmosphere.

There's so much I want to say about “One Day.” I mean, it has been a decade since I first encountered its source material in 2024 after this story was adapted into a film in 2011. It's hard to say my growth, my notions and imaginations about love weren't influenced even just a little. But what I am driving at, though it might sound cliché, is the classic scene— where Emma says to Dexter, “I love you, Dex, so much. I just don't like you anymore.”

I'd say this quote might be one of the most soulful moments of “One Day.” It's a profound expression of the complex and conflicting emotions in romantic relationships: loving and liking aren't always the same thing. This can be easily understood, much like how people often say marriage and love aren't always synonymous, as seen in countless stories of deception, infidelity, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Falling for Dexter is easy. After all, look at how he is described in the original novel— “Emma Morley thought handsome a silly, nineteenth-century word, but there really was no other word for it, except perhaps 'beautiful'.” Additionally, he inherited a good physique, received good upbringing, enjoys a stable life, and harbors burgeoning ambitions—all these comprehensively sum up his “middle-class” status, though to Emma, this term is an insult. But it's these things she doesn't have that attract her and countless ordinary people like us, isn't it? Not liking Dexter is also easy. He's selfish and arrogant; he leads a chaotic personal life and sleeps around with almost all his female friends; his alcoholism worsens after his mother's death; he is constantly intoxicated and even gets involved in drugs. What's more heartbreaking is that he momentarily stops being sincere towards his friends, nor did he cared for them.

But love is tricky. It is hard to cultivate love for someone and let go of it later. Love is nurtured through countless moments of developing liking (and of course, dislike) for your crush. Once the seed of love sprouts, it becomes an unbreakable bond. Love isn’t just about your crush's lovely smile or flushed cheeks; it's also about your radiant self in his or her eyes. Love entails inertia, incalculable costs of giving, and your self-identity projected onto the other party. Love is both a warm sensation in the stomach and a pain in the chest. Parents may not like their son, a murderer, for his evil and moral corruption, but they might never be able to stop loving him.

The same goes for Emma. Because of changes in their relationship, mostly due to Dexter's actions, she no longer likes him like she used to. But she still deeply loves him, his former loveliness, the joy and touching emotions he once brought, the time they spent together, the traces he left on her and the fact that she is a part of him.

However, ultimately, everything mentioned above stems from a foundation we often overlook— both parties in a relationship, or at least the one who has fallen out of love, are independent, complete individuals. Without this, nothing holds. This is also the flaw of the majority of unhealthy relationships in reality.

I highly recommend reading Eckhart Tolle's “The Power of Now,” even though its description of romantic relationships only spans a short chapter. But that's sufficient. I'll try to rephrase its inspiring perspective on individuals and relationships in my own words: If you attempt to seek salvation through romantic relationships, you will repeatedly suffer setbacks. Unless you no longer need to seek your sense of self from external sources— your social roles, financial assets, appearance, successes and failures, and of course, partner and interpersonal relationships— your fears, scarcity mindset, dissatisfactions, and sense of incompleteness will persist, and these, in turn, will harm and destroy your relationships and yourself. Some people live a single life and are unable to form romantic relationships or unwilling to repeat the same mistakes from past ones, while others move from one relationship to another in constant pursuit of a sense of satisfaction and elusive goals from the opposite sex. The essence of these two situations is the same. Unless you are enlightened, you cannot reap true love.

So, when Emma says that iconic line to Dexter, it's the moment of a woman's detachment from the narrative of love and a confirmation of her subjectivity, independence, and wholeness. Can you imagine it? Emma has been secretly in love with Dexter for so many years and throughout, she has been cautious and even somewhat lowers her posture in the relationship; yet in the end, she bravely rejects Dexter, a man who is gradually falling into decadence. This scene is more touching than the moment they finally become a couple; it tells us that true love can only happen between two mature, complete individuals.

When a male author attempts to write a story from the perspectives of both sexes, it's easy to lose balance— just take those typical male action movies as examples. Men make mistakes, lose direction in life, achieve success, or return to mundanity. He's got his whole character arc thing going on, while women just orbit around him; they’re reduced to just icing on the cake or some kind of reward. But under Nicholls' pen, Emma isn't that kind of woman, or at least not when she drops that line. Instead, she shines.

Now you get why “One Day” sticks with me. Actually, as I'm writing this, I'm thinking of giving it another watch.