As this movie revolves mostly around love, I shall speak from the various theories about love. Firstly, it was interesting to note that both Mickey and Ellen were deprived of their same-sex parent when they were young. Mickey's father left him when he was still a boy, and Ellen's mother passed away early in her life. As such, it would not be surprising that these circumstances affected their development of their attachment styles. On one hand, Ellen's behavior seems to resemble those of a pre-occupied attachment style. She was willing to throw away everything for Mickey and make him her whole world. However, this means that her own identity is somewhat lost. For instance, when he was away for long periods of time, at times she would say that she doesn't know who she is without Mickey. On the other hand, Mickey tends to portray more fearful-avoidant attachment. He wants Ellen to be a central part of his life, physically and emotionally. Yet, he is unable to give up the job of his life, ironically. Even when he took a leave of absence for Ellen's sake, he was not able to comprise willingly and went back to his old job soon after. Hence, his expression of feelings can be unpredictable and wild sometimes.
Moving on, their love definitely started out with being high and intense in the passion component of Sternberg's triarchic theory. As they mentioned in passing, they had sex for many times in all the rooms of the house. Moreover, Mickey shared many stories of himself whilst in his attempts to court Ellen. Although the intimacy and self-disclosure from Mickey's side was strong, Ellen was not sharing nearly as much. This can be seen when Ellen revealed that she was actually married along and never drop a hint about it to Mickey, rendering him speechless at the news. The intimacy between them was fuzzy during the early stages. As Mickey proposed and she accepted, the intimacy and commitment grew greater. Ellen even left her life in France to come and live with Mickey. From I can tell, I assume that the intimacy component did increase between the two, mainly because they started discovering aspects of each other that they did not find appealing. In a way, the more they knew each other, their more they came to abhor each other, at least in the areas that they did not agree in.
A recoccuring aspects is the crisis that pops up, one after another. The way that Mickey and Ellen handled the crisis, and each other, was quite an eye-opener of how others would in real life. Gottman's Four Horsemen of Apocalypse contains the various ways of negative conflict management. First off, Mickey tends to be contemptuous when he is arguing. Normally, his humor and jokes are fun and enjoyable. But when it is said with ugly mockery and sarcasm, things can escalated quickly and wrongly. On the other hand, Ellen acts defensively many times. She defends and justifies her actions and sacrifices, and turns it around to blame it back on Mickey. It does not improve the situation when both of them are being indirect and "subtle" with their anger and frustration. As time passes, they reverted to stonewalling each other. They both withdrew from each other emotionally and ignored the situation, as well as each other. As one of their friends said, it was like they were pretending to be married.
Some said that the movie was overly dramatic, with its repetitive crisis. Personally, perhaps the reason why I did not perceive it as dramatic, was because these crisis were relevant and very real. As time goes by, different issues would arises in different stages of the relationships. Staying together, spending family time with each other, conceiving children and so on and so forth. These are matters that cross my mind before, matters that I did not have a good solution for. But as I realized, after the movie, that these matters cannot be handled by me alone. It has to be approached by both me and my partner, as we decide how to move forward in life as a couple.
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