Well, one can learn to live with a sort of general wistfulness in those regards, but if it's anything more distracting than that, I'd recommend therapy.

There's often no real right and wrong with that kind of thing. Sure, it seems like they're rubbing it in purpose to escalate the situation. That's not nice of them, but in a way they're doing you a favour, by forcing you confront the fact that you're in no way emotionally ready to be friends with your ex. Rule of…

She corrected her mistake by divorcing him.

Well, it's his entire arc that he couldn't do it before, otherwise it wouldn't make for good drama. Of course we just get the training montage version of that kind of character development but those are the constraints of the medium.

I'm not seeing what you're seeing, but I haven't seen that movie in a while. For the record, I would also always clean up my shit eventually, once sufficiently reminded. But that's a problem already - people you have to constantly run after to do stuff are a pain in the ass. I realize that well enough in other areas…

You really think that the person who describes herself as "serious enough for everbody" never had that conversation about money and chores?

He might not have been entirely clueless, but he probably underestimated the severity of the issue. A complains, B makes some gestures towards pacification, but soon slips back into the troublesome behavior - rinse, repeat - until A decides complaining is a waste of energy and just puts up with it (gotta pick your…

Why would you find that hard to believe? Men who actually pull their weight when it comes to chores are rather the exception than the norm. Women are socialized to not expect better, but it does become hard to tolerate, when he's also sitting around at home all day.

Would surprise me. McSweeney's twee, but more arch about it. This may qualify for twee, but not for arch. That said, you're probably the one with more McSweeney-reading friends.

Maybe it was her who treated him like dirt to make him stick like mud though?

Didn't stop him from dating her for a while afterwards. Looks like the slap-slap-kiss dynamic is not merely a matter of fiction after all.

The relationship in the Notebook is also fairly toxic though, if you think about it for a second. (Although the chemistry was really good… that kiss in the rain…also, Ryan Gosling at peak-prettiness). But that romantic ride on the ferris-wheel, where he essentially blackmails her into agreeing to a date, by climbing…

In terms of prestige - no. Fans of highbrow stuff will look down on both. In terms of marketing though? Traditional romance publishers will immediately reject anything without a happy ending. There's no genre more narrowly defined than traditional romance.

Maybe she wouldn't be so happy about it, if she knew how miserable it made you. It might be a fun distraction for her, but not worth risking the good thing she has with you. And if you don't tell her how you feel, that's what she doing. Because even if you decide to play the martyr and grin and bear it, that can't be…

I think I get where you're coming from (I prefer Buffy as well), but I can also see the counter-argument: Genre stuff may have the more high-concept premise to add a bit of extra buzz, but it also tends to come with monster-of-the-week-episodes, which can feel pretty rote unless done very well. Fufilling "the promise…

Something tells me there won't be any white saviours in this one.

Sadly, women often don't feel in a position to throw drinks and punches, so lots of guys get away with this for way too long.

Chances are they're way too busy trying to impress _you_ to notice much about your own impressiveness or lack thereof.

Next steps
He stops doing the the thing.
He makes peace with the fact that he'll still be on people's shitlist for a while, because it will take some time till he has a sufficient track record of not doing the thing.

I still think about it on occasion. It's all fine and dandy to have a distaste for pointless bravado, but maybe I'm a bit too quick to dismiss bravado as pointless.