Chapter 16

Opposites

Sometimes we root for two people to be together because they are opposites. Which means that between them they have everything they need. The Yin and Yang. Two halves make a whole.

In old movies, particularly Westerns, it looked like this: The Big Man and the Little Woman. The Big Man was usually played by someone like John Wayne, or Clark Gable. Joel McCrea. Even Henry Fonda and James Stewart and Gregory Peck played a few of these in their day. The Little Woman would be played by a tough little woman like Jean Arthur, or Donna Reed or Barbara Stanwyck.

The Big Man would clear the land, fight off bears and banditos, plow the field, build the cabin and the furniture, harvest the crops, and protect and provide for the family.

The Little Woman would only have a few minor things to handle on her side of the equation: have the babies, raise them, clothe them, feed them, wash them, do the cooking. Tend the garden. Gather eggs. Milk cows. Make butter and cheese. Make clothes and curtains and wash them. And make the soap to wash them. Kill the chickens, pluck them, and cook them. Keep the house clean. Cook three meals a day. Clean up after them. Keep herself pretty and her man satisfied. Just a few little things.

The point is that in that old-fashioned system this is how people survived. By dividing the work of life and by sharing the duties, the two of them make a life. And perhaps even a good one. Between the two of them they had everything they needed. They were self-sufficient and self-contained.

A flip version of this yin/yang type of story is dramatized in the film Impromptu (1991, written by Sarah Kernochan). Judy Davis plays the Frenchwoman novelist who writes under the nom-de-plume of George Sand. She is strong, somewhat masculine, full of energy and passion. She falls in love with Frederic Chopin, the composer and pianist, played by Hugh Grant. He is fragile, brilliant, consumptive, and falls for her as well. For them the equivalent of sex is for her to lie on her back on the floor under the grand piano while he plays. It is orgasmic. Actual sex might kill him, so wise choice. It’s the kind of relationship where, when Chopin is challenged to a duel with pistols, he walks ten paces, then faints. George rushes to him, grabs the gun, and shoots the other man. Role reversal. But between the two of them they have everything they need to make it work as long as they both shall live, which isn’t all that long, sadly.

Over the decades things have swung back and forth, but ultimately this type of couple has everything they need between them, but they bring different things to the table. There was an era of Mr. Mom movies where Dad took over Mom’s old job while she went out and earned their income. Sometimes both work and take care of the home.

The basic formula is that she has what he lacks and vice versa.

A contemporary example of this dynamic would be As Good as It Gets (1997, written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks). Jack Nicholson’s Melvin Udall is a best-selling author and an obsessive compulsive man. He has money, success, and a fabulous apartment. Fortunately he can easily afford his OCD habits. But he is a difficult person who, having mastered the outer world, has no clue about the inner life. He doesn’t know how to be a friend, neighbor, family member, co-worker, or in any way kind, empathetic, or understanding. He has no relationships. No friend. He doesn’t even know how to walk a dog.

His love interest, the waitress Carol (played by Helen Hunt), covers the opposite territory. She has no clue about the outer world: job, money, health insurance, housing, pretty much all the external skills for living successfully in New York City. She lives in a crumby little apartment with her son and her mother. She works at a lousy coffee shop job as a waitress. When her son regularly gets sick, she has to rush with him to an Emergency Room because she doesn’t know what else to do. In other words, she has no clue about the outer world. What she does have is an inner life. She knows how to be a friend, a co-worker, a mother, a daughter, and a good waitress. She knows how to love and be loved. How to be part of a family and a community.

When they get together, Melvin immediately gets a renowned doctor to come to her house, diagnose her kid, and cure him. If they become a couple, he will be able to supply her with a stable income, a nice place to live, a chance to do something more with her life, like go to college and pursue a career beyond the coffee shop. And she can teach him how to love somebody, open his heart, communicate, be in a relationship, and by the end, to be part of a family.

My favorite line, which pretty much says it all: near the end when Melvin follows Carol up the stairs toward her apartment, forgetting to even avoid stepping on the cracks, he overhears her mutter to herself, “Why can’t I ever have a normal boyfriend?”

Astonished, he says out loud, “Boyfriend?” It never occurred to him he could be such a thing.

Between the two of them, they have everything they need.

Two halves make a whole.