To continue my rabbit hole through books of contemporary romance, I recently finished The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. I bought it the day before my birthday, and I was trying to read it little by little to draw it out, but I found that I couldn’t resist reading it.
Spoiler alert: That’s until I got about halfway through and Adam overheard Olive talking to Malcolm inside the Starbucks on campus, and the conversation Olive had with Adam after made me want to throw the book across the room. My friends all convinced me to finish it though, and it was pretty cute. I would give it 4/5 stars, overall.
Anyway, today’s blog is inspired by the books. Each of the chapters has a hypothesis that Olive makes about love and her love life, which kind of foreshadows what happens in each chapter. So for today, I thought I would come up with a few love hypotheses of my own.
Being authentic and honest will get you the best results.
In The Love Hypothesis, Olive lies to her best friend Anh about going on a date, and she ends up kissing the first person she finds when she thinks Anh is going to catch her in the lie. While I know that Olive is lying under the best intentions for her friend, it isn’t the healthiest thing for any relationship, even if it’s a friendship. Lucky for Olive, Adam already had a glimpse of her authentic self when she was wearing expired contacts and couldn’t see him, and he decided that he liked her anyway.
When I was going on dates to get to know people, I remember putting on a front in the beginning. I know that everyone does this, because you want to put your best foot forward, but there were times in conversation where we would just be talking, and my brain would be like, “Oh, he doesn’t like this, so you can’t say that,” or, “Don’t do this, because he made a face at that.” That kind of thinking is exhausting.
And you don’t want to be exhausted, because dating is supposed to be fun. I think that’s why it was so easy with my current boyfriend; I didn’t think things would go beyond friendship, so I just let myself be the self that was comfortable with my friends.
Communication is the key to any successful relationship.
I say this all the time in real life, because it’s true and applicable to so many issues that end up coming up in relationships. Everyone has different boundaries, and things get mixed up when these things aren’t communicated. Like sometimes I think of the beginning of my relationship where my boyfriend ordered us Zaxby’s and then forgot to ask what sauce I wanted. It’s something I still think about when I try and think of his flaws.
That’s something small, but it can lead to other things. Like how Olive’s one lie about a date led to her lying about a whole relationship. I don’t know what the sauce thing will lead to, but I’ll never have to find out, because I remind him of it occasionally. He probably won’t ever forget now.
You can’t fake chemistry.
Olive was lucky that she kissed someone who was already attracted to her, otherwise things could’ve been much more awkward. Chemistry is something that you can’t force, no matter how hard you want to. It’s like watching a romantic movie where you know the lead actors hate each other or broke up right before filming started. No amount of good acting can create chemistry that isn’t there.
I feel like it gets thrown around that girls don’t like the nice guy, and I think generalizations like that are not beneficial to anyone. It is just that there is no chemistry with some people, whether it’s a nice guy or not. It works the other way too. If the chemistry is there, it’s going to be hard to deny it.
Having an open mind goes a long way.
The plot of The Love Hypothesis thickens because–and I’ve already said spoiler alert in the beginning of this post–Olive can’t believe that she could ever love Adam, only to have her emotions smack her in the face like the gloves Anh borrowed from Olive. And if she just accepted her feelings and confessed, this book might be half the length it is. But she was closed-minded, and she sabotaged the whole thing.
I wouldn’t say that I completely friend-zoned Asanti, just because every time our mutual friends heard we were hanging out, they implied that it was a date. From sushi dinner to Disney, they said we were going on dates. It was hard to keep him in the friend zone mentally, with all those thoughts swirling around my head. And then there was that kiss that completely sealed the deal.
What book should I read next? Do you have any love hypotheses of your own? When it comes to love, romance, and relationships, do you have any hard and fast rules that you live by? I would love to hear your answers in the comments below!
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Love Always,
Kristi My
Kristi My Dao 