To imagine a life beyond loneliness look to When Harry Met Sally

This month marks 32 years since the release of When Harry Met Sally. Written by the late great Nora Ephron and starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, it launched something of a revolution in dating culture. Relationship topics that had been considered taboo, were analysed at length against a Manhattan backdrop of autumn leaves and Harry Connick Jr’s crooning. The movie’s impact was so seismic it’s fair to say that without Sally there is no Carrie Bradshaw; without Harry, no George Costanza, or Jerry Seinfeld.

It’s been 32 years since When Harry Met Sally was first released.

Marketed as a romantic comedy, it also represented a quest for a life beyond heartache and loneliness. And with over 13 million in lockdown across Australiaâ€" a country that now has more single people living alone than at any other time â€" it feels comforting, in the way an Oodie is both daggy and somehow very cool to revisit those seminal phrases and ideas about sex and dating.

Maybe we can lose ourselves, if only for a brief moment, in the fizzy chemistry and charming neurosis of Harry and Sally, and their lofty romantic ideals that, along with their late 80s hair and chunky knit sweaters, still manage to hold currency today.

The idea that men and women can’t be friends

It’s Harry who lays down this belief as if it’s the law early on, and the movie itself does little to disprove it. But whether it is true or not is almost beside the point, given how hetero-normative the premise was and how thoroughly the idea burrowed itself into our belief systems. To wit: two decades later, the Scientific American undertook serious research to find out if it were true, concluding it was, kind of, due to the fact that “Men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends”.

This grave miscalculation of attraction became so common it eventually gave rise to its own catchphrase, coined by comedian Chris Rock in a stand-up set in 1996 and sprayed around the internet by dejected “nice guys” and Incels alike: the Friend Zone.

The introduction of women as being ‘high maintenance’

The phrase is articulated by Harry while he and Sally are watching Casablanca together in their separate apartments. Harry calls Ingrid Bergman ‘low maintenance’ and when Sally queries this, Harry tells her she’s ‘high maintenance’, a description that speaks to Sally’s tightly-wound, Type-A fussiness, particularly in regards to food (which was in reality an homage to Ephron, a food obsessive who would go on to write and direct her own homage to French cooking, Julie and Julia).

It has since become shorthand for a particular type of female entitlement. The last decade has seen a pushback against the term, which had been weaponised against any woman who dared to ask for wine instead of beer or more than the bare minimum in a relationship.

Coining of the term ‘transitional person’

More significant than a rebound, but still existing within that genre, is the “transitional person” who is neither serious nor smart but exists to help you to get over your big breakup and take you into your next proper relationship. The concept is explained in detail by Sally in between sobs over her ex-boyfriend, Joe and the woman Sally has just learned he’s going to marry â€" Kimberly, a woman Joe works with. “He just met her!” she cries to Harry “She’s supposed to be his transitional person! She’s not supposed to be The One!”

Long before research, Sally let Harry know that faking was a real thing â€" in the middle of a crowded cafe, no less.

Which brings us to the most over-used term in modern romance culture: ‘The One’

Sally’s insistence that the natural order of relationships has been upended is also the first time the term The One is mentioned onscreen. From that point on, we will hear it whispered by overzealous friends in bars, embedded in the lyrical poetry of Taylor Swift, admitted to in Paris by Mr Big and declared loudly and proudly by anyone who is deep in the heart of limerence, that state of wild infatuation which psychologists estimate can last no longer than two to three years.

Reaching a zenith in the early 2000s, usage then widens to mean deep love for a best friend. US President Barack Obama invokes it in 2008, with a phrase he returns to again and again to incite political engagement: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” But his use of the quote is appropriated by millions of Instagram Influencers, meme makers and life coaches to cement the now commonly held precept that it is psychologically dangerous and co-dependent to believe you’ll be rescued by a spouse. These days it is still used, though sometimes ironically and often in regard to pets.

Women faking orgasms is a thing

Long before research into the pleasure gap found that men over-estimated the orgasms women were having during sex with them, Sally let Harry know that faking was a real thing â€" in the middle of a crowded cafe, no less. The scene launched a thousand copycat versions in movies, ads and TV, effectively dislodging heterosexual men’s belief in their own sexual prowess. It was shocking, funny, wild and changed the way both men and women approached sex for the better, which is, ultimately, not a bad thing.

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Natalie Reilly is freelance writer for The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and WAtoday.

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