Imagine walking into a grocery store where none of the cans, boxes, or cartons on the shelves were labeled with a picture or the name of the product they contained. You’d be sunk. I mean, you’d probably be able to distinguish between soup cans and cereal boxes, but you might wind up making your casserole with chicken & stars instead of cream of mushroom soup. Labels are hugely important to us because, when we put money or time or energy into something, we like to know what we’re getting. The need for labels is especially evident when it comes to relationships.
The importance of labeling relationships is clear in Jane Austen’s classic novel, Sense and Sensibility. The novel’s heroines, the two oldest Dashwood sisters, take entirely different approaches to relationships. Both sisters fall deeply in love over the course of the story; but whereas Elinor, the oldest sister, guards her heart and adheres to society’s rules when interacting with Edward Ferrars, Marianne chooses to let her affections for John Willoughby override her reason.
After Willoughby gives Marianne a private tour of the house he will one day inherit, Elinor chastises Marianne. The visit, and Willoughby and Marianne’s unreservedly affectionate behavior, implies (wrongly) to others of their acquaintance that they are secretly engaged. Marianne insists that “if there had been any real impropriety in what [she] did, [she] should have been sensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting wrong.” Marianne attempts to justify her behavior by distinguishing between society’s rules and “real” propriety, because she believes Willoughby’s warmth to be an indication of intentions to propose. Because their love feels to Marianne as real as a formal arrangement, which would have had clear boundaries and rules, she behaves as though they are engaged; but by skipping the step of the actual application of a label to their relationship, Marianne denied herself the protection that comes with the formal label.
Fixation on labels, especially by women, is often unfairly mocked. (Anyone perceived as being too focused on “defining the relationship” is herself at risk of being labeled “crazy,” “psycho,” or “obsessive.”) But the truth is, when we share substantial amounts of our time or our emotional or physical selves with another person without first applying a formal relationship label, we risk allowing ourselves to be used. Labels safeguard against dishonesty about the nature of a relationship. They ensure that two people are on the same page and inform both parties’ expectations. Obviously, people have to get to know one another before deciding the direction of their relationship, and I’m certainly not saying that people can’t use or abuse their significant other inside the boundaries of defined relationships. But labels clarify, to the two parties involved and to outsiders, what relationships are and thereby identify the rules to be followed.
This is one “truth universally acknowledged” that movies tend to get right. Think about The Holiday, or 2012’s best hilarious surprise, Pitch Perfect. In The Holiday, Kate Winslet’s Iris Simpkins has been jerked around by the same guy, first as a boyfriend and then not, for over three years. Iris explains to a coworker that subsequent to Jasper’s cheating, their breakup, and his becoming someone else’s boyfriend that they “email, not when he’s with her, of course. Also when he’s not with her, we talk on the phone, sometimes for hours. And then there’s the occasional long lunch...” Or take Jesse, Pitch Perfect’s nice guy, who plays opposite Anna Kendrick’s Beca. Jesse and Beca spend increasingly more time together as the flick progresses, and at times it seems Jesse’s assumed the role of Beca’s boyfriend without actually becoming her boyfriend. But his efforts earn him hurt and embarrassment when Beca harshly and publicly puts him off. This, of course, is not to cast blame on Iris and Jesse—who hasn’t experienced unrequited love, after all?—but to offer advice. In the words of Bing Crosby from Holiday Inn: Be careful, it’s [your] heart.
In traditional rom-com fashion, all is eventually righted, but only after Beca (unintentionally) and Jasper (intentionally) have abused another person’s vulnerability and affection. Iris and Jesse’s willingness to step away from relationships labeled as such, with well-defined boundaries and rules, makes them vulnerable to the misbehavior of others and causes them pain. Marianne Dashwood perceives this after the fact; though Marianne acknowledges Willoughby to be guiltier than she is, she tells Elinor that she sees in her sister how she ought to have behaved.
Labels may be bourgeois—even the punchline of a cynical, sex-obsessed culture. Establishing where a relationship stands certainly takes work. But labels have their purpose: to tell us what things are and what they are not. Generally speaking, I’m grateful that the formality of Austen’s era has fallen out of fashion, but honesty, integrity, and intentionality never go out of style.
