What’s easier in life: falling in love or the idea of falling in love? Over the last decade, Hallmark, a greeting card company started in 1907, has grown to tell the story of love on screen. 

During February, otherwise known as “Loveuary,” the idealistic attitude of love is overdone and overplayed in the Hallmark industry. While the movies aired do leave you feeling the lust of Valentine’s Day, the plots of every movie are relatively similar. 

Hallmark movies are often mocked for following the same plot, with each featuring different actors and actresses and a new location. In addition to their redundancy, love is marketed as plain and simple. Many viewers grasp this fake idea of romance, which Hallmark presents as unsurprising and immature.  

Falling in love should be unpredictable, genuine, assertive, exciting and supportive. Still, most importantly, people must know that there is a difference between being in love and being in a cloud of lust. Hallmark tends to make love a complicated battle ending in chasing the person you love across states and shifting their lives to satisfy one another. Viewers commonly describe Hallmark love as immature and inconsistent. 

Love can be complicated, confusing and frustrating at times, but choosing to become resilient to these battles is what matters. Though loving the right person will be easy, that doesn’t mean it won’t be hard at times, which is a concept Hallmark fails to understand. 

Watching Hallmark’s “Loveuary” is a lot easier to lust over than fall in love with. The density of love in the Hallmark movie industry is conflicting when their narrative of love is misleading. Their success in greeting cards is remarkable, but their failure in the movie industry is especially astonishing. 

Falling in love is not easy, but falling for lust will be. Hallmark will teach what it means to lust, but love is a constant learning process, one that is not easy but can be accomplished with the right person.