She kept making it seemed like they could have something more especially when she invited him to that party while engaged? Reminds me of this woman who I knew.When I was into her she of course pulled away but when I had a girlfriend then she wanted to flirt and show interest.
- Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
I haven't seen this movie yet but I keep seeing this posts on tumblr about how selfish Tom is and they keep bashing him instead of Summer. Saying he's a selfish douche bag and that every girl he meets becomes the "one" because he creates this fantasy around them.
I think that is utter *beep* The fact is we eventually except the fact when the door closes on us and we move on to the next person but to me it is in no way wrong to idealize that person to cherish them as something more than just an ordinary person. He's meeting all these ideal women and they all just got something else in mind it's exhausting after awhile you just want someone to respect you and not act like your thinking about just yourself. In a way it requires a mutual selfishness about one another that in return becomes selflessness that creates this soul-mate bond. You care about their well being for your own well being and don't want them with anyone else but will eventually except it if they decide to up an leave for someone else cause what kind of relationship can you have if they don't want you back?
She didn't lead himself on. He wanted to make more of there relationship then she did. She told him upfront she was not interested in love. But she does like him, and I think seriously considered love. But she didn't find she loved him, and their fighting was what drove them apart ("we've been like Syd and Nancy"). Personally I think it his pressure to push them into a love relationship that drove them apart. If he had been less eager to be in love, she might have grown to love him in that way; but it didn't happen.
The party scene is sad, but again, he lead himself on by making more of it then he should have. She never promised him anything, and never said they would be getting back together. Also I don't think she ever really how obsessed he was with her (he never told her), and she asked him by email, if he was ready to just be friends. Also she invited him to a party on OUR rooftop patio, not 'the rooftop patio', or 'my rooftop patio', but our rooftop patio. That implies she is living with someone. She apparently didn't know she was about to get engaged (she said so). Ok, she should have told him that she was seeing someone else, but the topic never came up.
I actually think she treated him in a very responsible, adult manner.
I don't think Tom was a bad person either. He fell in love for no fault of his own, and he didn't try to hurt her after they broke up.
In many ways, their break up is a model of how it should work.
Breakups are always going to hurt because that life.
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RIGOLETTO: I'm denied that common human right, to weep.
This is to the OP, since ntsci and I have debated this point endlessly and do not (and will not) agree:
Both Tom & Summer were to blame, IMO
Summer's actions and words rarely matched up. If you're going on dates with someone and sleeping with them, and at the same time insisting that it isn't a "relationship" and you're "just friends" you're risking creating a confusing situation for your partner. You're free to say one thing and do the other, but you can't create a guessing game for the other person and be blameless when they pick incorrectly.
Tom had ample opportunities to see that Summer was not going to give him the type of relationship he wanted, and he still didn't act on them. He choose infatuation over love because he'd built up an idea in his head that she was the one from the beginning, and he chose to ignore parts of her that didn't fit that ideal. If you're going to create an idealized person of someone, it's not their fault for not living up to it, it is your fault for creating it.
The main example would be when, after their fight, he tells her explicitly "I need consistency from you" and she explicitly responds "I can't give you that." At that point, both of them should have seen that they were not right for the other person, but instead they chose to continue doing what they were doing.
Both of them could have handled the relationship (however you define it) better, both are likely better off with someone else.
The party scene is sad, but again, he lead himself on by making more of it then he should have. She never promised him anything, and never said they would be getting back together.
She totally led him on. She knew right from the start that she wasn't "just a girl, just a girl" to Tom from that "stalking" remark. She knew that Tom was falling for her. She knew from Tom's willingness to get into a bar fight, from his asking "what are we?" in the car, from his declaration that "we are a couple!" at her place, that he was falling for her.
So no, no f'g way, she did not treat him "in a very responsible, adult manner." She should have cut it off, much, much earlier than she did. Way earlier than, what was it, 8 or 9 months? She should have cut it off after 2 months when she knew he was falling for her and she wasn't in any way interested in falling for him.
That is not responsible, that is not adult. That is mean.
I've been Tom. I've been with someone I was falling for, someone I got along with great, who I enjoyed spending time with - and her me - someone with whom I shared the same common interests. And she had the common decency to realize that I was falling for her hard and that she just wasn't. And she cut it off within two months. That is responsible. That is adult.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Agreed! I just cannot how people think that she didn't lead him on? Intentionally, non intentionally - whichever.
shareI think it was pretty crappy of Summer to do that. I think she should've told him that she was engaged before the party. I'm sure she knew about his feelings but I kind of wonder if she did that on purpose so that they would both have closure.
shareI think she kind of did, simply because she knew that he was hurt from the breakup. Now of she would have told him the purpose of the party, that would have been different. But it was hurtful the way he found out.
shareYeah, she could've told him before he went to the party since at the wedding it was clear he still liked her.
I don't really think she was leading him on during the film, but instead was trying to sort out how she really felt about him. Plus he was so cute around her, and that probably made it harder.
Yes, she did, though I don't think she meant to. She was definitely "out there."
I don't think I'd even be able to tolerate someone that kisses and has sex with a person regularly and spends almost all their free time with them yet refuses to call it a 'relationship'.
She was more trouble than she was worth.
I was disappointed to see JGL take a full "Tom was wrong" stance on his Facebook recently, instead of understanding that this is one of the few rare romantic comedies that makes both protagonists flawed. It seems like he took a major feminist stance on it, which sucks, because he's seeing the movie through a limited field of vision.
"That's the karma again, I didn't help Kenny so she beat me up with a telephone"
this is one of the few rare romantic comedies that makes both protagonists flawed.
I was disappointed to see JGL take a full "Tom was wrong" stance on his Facebook recently,
Well that's certainly disappointing. I thought they were both equally to blame ...until the wedding. Then I do think Summer led him on. She didn't mention she was seeing someone (and why wasn't her fiancé at the wedding to begin with), danced with Tom and acted all flirty.
Then the real kicker was inviting him to the party without any warning that she is engaged. She could've called him even if she didn't know at the wedding.
My thoughts exactly!
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uh, what do I know ?!?
The wedding scene was problematic to me, and while I agree it's strange Summer didn't mention her boyfriend (they weren't engaged yet), it's also symptomatic of the entire problem with Tom.
They break up on Day 290. The train ride to the wedding is on Day 402. From what we seen in the film, the entirety of their communication during the four months between these two incidents has been one (brief) e-mail exchange. Now, I don't know what Summer and Tom talked about during this long day. But I doubt it was a "Do you have feelings for me? Do you ever think about getting back together" conversation (mainly because if it were, I think the filmmakers would have shown us.)
So based on spending, what, one day together, Tom expects that Summer's going to take him back at this party, despite:
—Her ending the relationship
—Them having almost no contact for four months
—Their meeting being unexpected and random (what if Mackenzie had told Tom a few days earlier that he wasn't going? Tom would have, in his own words, not gone, and the whole meeting doesn't happen)
Tom doesn't like having serious conversations about the state of their relationship because, as his sister told him once already, he's afraid of "getting an answer he doesn't want which will spoil his illusion of how great things have been". Even when Tom then broaches the subject in the car with Summer later, when she essentially gives a non-answer to him, he just goes along with it.
So Tom, after spending one nice day with an ex-girlfriend who he hasn't seen in four months, decides everything is back to the way it was, and the way he wants it. That's naivete at best, and flat out stupid at worst. Regardless of what Summer did or didn't do at the wedding, Tom simply takes what happens and ascribes way too much significance to it, because he's functioned from the beginning of the movie believing she's the one for him.
Summer does technically lead him on, but not knowingly. Tom unfortunately just has an entitlement complex to him. He sees the break-up as an obstacle and that he can 'win' her back. Even when the relationship starts, Summer is up front that she doesn't want anything serious. But Tom still goes through with it because he believes he can win her over and get what he feels he's entitled to. At certain points in the movie I get that Summer is giving in a little because she feels sorry for him.
Summer seems like a girl who's actually rather destructive but doesn't know it. She changes her mind from one minute to the next and doesn't really care about whose feelings she may be messing with. Namely she meets up with Tom and spends a whole day with him - and doesn't mention her new boyfriend. So in short both of them are to blame slightly. Tom for thinking Summer is entitled to him - and reading any possible hint as a sign that she's the one. And Summer for obliviously giving false hope to a guy she knows is obsessive and crazy about her.
—Their meeting being unexpected and random (what if Mackenzie had told Tom a few days earlier that he wasn't going? Tom would have, in his own words, not gone, and the whole meeting doesn't happen)
At the time, though, wouldn't that have just played into Tom's idea of fate? That they were meant to both be unaccompanied when they bumped into each other on the train. He'd already be thinking that years down the line, it'll be a great story about how they were reunited.
Agree with your comment and the earlier one that it's strange that Summer's soon-to-be-fiance wasn't at the wedding with her, and that she didn't mention him all day. Maybe the bride (who'd left the company during all this) wasn't sure if Tom and Summer were a couple either! And so didn't want to send them a joint invite but also didn't want to put "plus one" on each of theirs, so just sent them separate individual ones....or maybe Summer's new man just couldn't make it for whatever reason.
As for the subject not coming up, that can be explained by what we've seen throughout the movie. That Summer avoided mentioning her new relationship to prevent any awkwardness or upset on what was a fun day together, and that Tom consciously avoided asking any questions that might cause her to reveal that she'd moved on, because, as his sister so brilliantly pointed out earlier, he was scared of what the answer might be.
Of course she did. Think how you would feel if it happened to you. It's called emotional abuse. She kept sleeping with him despite not loving him. She knew he loved her.
share[deleted]
while I've already replied once on this thread, I may as well type this here. There's a couple of lines in the movie that imply that Tom falls hard and fast and that he's been in the same situation before, and having looked over these boards, I can't see that they've been mentioned yet.
Very early on in the movie, when Chloe Grace Moretz cycles round, can't remember if it's her or one of Tom's friends says "it's Amanda Heller all over again".
More tellingly, immediately after Tom's "I love Summer" monologue, which he's actually saying to his friend, when he's finished talking and walks away, as soon as Tom's out of ear shot, the friend says "this is NOT good". As if he already knows where this is heading. Presumably he'd seen enough of their interactions during the "stalking/if any 'jobs' come up" scene to realise that she was no-where near as into it as Tom. Or, as I say, it's happened before, and when Tom starts talking like this, waxing poetically about a girl, he's heading for a fall.
There's also an extended version of Tom's blind date with Rachel Boston, in which, after establishing that Summer hadn't cheated, abused, stole from him and told him from the beginning that she didn't want to be serious, she says "jeez Tom, did she break your heart, or did you?".
I guess that line was taken out because it would have taken all the subtlety and interpretations and debate out of the story.