William Thacker, where are you?

Make yourself known hun!

Notting Hill (1999) - Pictures via Pinterest

The latest celebrity breakup to send shockwaves across social media is that of Molly Mae Hague and Tommy Fury. Admittedly, I’m not sure how significant this is if you’re not a girl in your twenties from the UK, but trust me when I tell you that when the news broke, the earth stopped turning for a second.

A brief context - Molly Mae and Tommy were runners up on Love Island UK in 2019, and had been together ever since. They lived together, had a daughter in 2023 and were engaged to be married. Their breakup has been so shocking that it was a headline on the news. Even I can admit that was a bit dramatic of the BBC.

I’m not here to speculate about why their relationship ended, but it did get me thinking about the way we perceive relationships online and how disheartening social media and reality shows like Love Island can be when it comes to navigating dating and relationships today. Following their announcement, I saw a lot of declarations that “love isn’t real” and honestly, not to be a pessimist because that’s not my vibe, but I get it.

I was raised on a diet of Richard Curtis films. Four Weddings, Love Actually, About Time, Notting Hill, if you don’t know get to know, but I’m sure you do. I don’t know whether times have just dramatically changed and the ways in which people find love in those films is extremely outdated or whether Hugh Grant’s bumbling, charming performances were all a devastating lie, but it appears that my experiences of life thus far haven’t matched up to the stories promised to me by the great RC. His characters, full of wit, sensitivity and sincerity, are unlike any bachelor I have encountered. I know they must be out there somewhere, but today I must ask the question - William Thacker, where are you?

My peers and I have been watching shows like Love Island since we were about sixteen. I was never a huge fan but watched it so that I was able to join in on conversations about who was coupled up with who over glasses of sweet rosé. I found it slightly anxiety inducing, watching people cry after having their hearts bruised and confidence knocked, and the encouragement of scheming and betrayal for good television. I stopped watching a couple of years ago, but I’m still seeing the aftershocks of each series reflected in the behaviour and attitudes of people around me.

There are so many avenues to go down when it comes to Love Island but I don’t want to write a whole dissertation on this. The main attitude I think the show perpetuates is the mindset that the grass is always greener on the other side - “this or something better”, “I’m happy but I could be happier”. It’s a phrase I heard constantly on the show, and then echoed in conversations with friends. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone should stay in a relationship that doesn’t fulfil them or make them happy, but the idea that there will be a single, perfect person who ticks every one of your boxes is just unrealistic, and it’s a selfish approach to being in a relationship. It should be about both of you, together.

I can’t speak on the pressure this puts on men as I haven’t had the conversation or observed it, but in my personal experience this attitude puts girls and women under intense pressure to be perfect, and amplifies the fear of not being good enough for a partner. I think it bothers me especially because I’ve experienced similar feelings myself.

This infatuation with perfection has prompted a culture that overly scrutinises people, from appearances to interests, careers to material goods. It’s unrealistic and judgemental. This makes sense on a television show where the contestants know what they’re getting themselves into and drama is encouraged for views, but it doesn’t translate well in the real world. We’re getting our friends to proof-read texts, waiting hours to reply to appear nonchalant, changing our looks to appeal to a preferred “type”, and obsessively scrolling through social media pages to gather information before a date. We can become so persistent in appealing to someone out of fear that we’re not good enough, that we distort our entire personalities and forget who we were to begin with. Is that not exhausting?

The issue with a show like Love Island is it unapologetically promotes an unrealistic ideal, and we’re so saturated by content from the show and its contestants that it becomes normalised when it really shouldn’t be. We’re constantly shown storylines of cheating, nastiness, heartbreak and unrequited love. I’m no longer shocked by them, more a numbness stemming from inevitability and repetition.

In Notting Hill, we meet William Thacker (played by Hugh Grant). He owns a bookshop, his dating life is terrible, he’s excruciatingly humble and has perfect hair, and throughout the movie he dedicates himself to being absolutely perfect for Anna, a movie star he met accidentally. In Love Actually, Colin Firth plays Jamie, a writer with an enviable knitwear collection who is recovering from unexpected heartbreak, clumsily learning Portuguese to be able to talk to Aurelia, who has fallen in love with him too. What about Tim in About Time, who goes back in time thrice to meet Mary. I’m not saying we need to manipulate the laws of time and space, but what happened to genuine romance? A bouquet of flowers in place of the fire emoji on an Instagram story? A little bit of effort? Are people still mesmerised by one another?

Personally, I’m not uncomfortable or unhappy being single. I’m patient when it comes to finding someone. However, as I’m sure a lot of you will have also experienced, this does not stop unsolicited advice and opinions. I was once told that the reason I was single was because I was too much of a “wife” and “boys aren’t ready for someone like that”. I’m not sure where that came from or if it’s because I’m not into clubbing and like to wear midi skirts, but quite frankly I’ve never heard anything more absurd in my life. Who said anything about marriage?! I was confused as to whether it was a compliment or not, but it certainly rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve always used the theory that “if I’m not for you then you’re not for me”, but to place blame on my personality or style or attitude as a reason as to why I haven’t found my person felt wrong, even if it was supposed to be affirming. It also inferred to me that girls that did have boyfriends or were dating were disposable and replaceable, or not to be taken seriously, which is just as ridiculous and makes me extremely uncomfortable. I really hate this concept of categorising women based on whether they’re “wife material” or not. Throwback to the Victorian era! This is something I hear more and more frequently, and honestly it just seems like another way to praise or shame women.

Editing note - Turns out there was a challenge on Love Island this year in which the boys had to put the girls in order based on “wifey material”. Their logic? At the top of the list we had women who fell into the categories, “Welsh girls are wifey as f****”, and “polite and sweet”, whereas the girls at the bottom of the list were newly single or “like partying too much”. I rest my case.

The bar:

Maybe I’m a bit naive, but I always thought that it would be easy to find someone who shared my aspiration for the kind of love that feels like a Nat King Cole song. It would appear that these days Craig David is more the inspo. It’s getting boring sitting opposite someone who has one eye on you and the other scanning the room for a better model.

I’m really starting to wonder where all the blokes are that could have been leads in a Richard Curtis film. They can’t be an extinct breed. So whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I’ll turn on one of my comfort films and hope for the best. Would the real William Thacker please stand up?