How do our child­hood movie crush­es shape our future love lives?

If you’ve ever watched that clip of Aragorn open­ing the doors in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Tow­ers and found it altered your brain chem­istry, you’re def­i­nite­ly not alone. Who knew some­thing as mun­dane as enter­ing a room could be quite so…overwhelming?

I have been crush­ing on Aragorn as far back as I can remem­ber. Even now, over 20 years after The Fel­low­ship of the Ring intro­duced him in all his chival­rous, ten­der glo­ry, I silent­ly thank Peter Jack­son for cast­ing Vig­go Mortensen every time I rewatch the tril­o­gy. With the excep­tion of the year I want­ed to be an elf, crush­ing on Aragorn was one of the most defin­ing parts of my for­ma­tive years.

It would also be fair to say that fan­cy­ing the Aragorns and Will Turn­ers of the big screen very much shaped my ​‘type’ as an adult, and I’m not the only one. The viral child­hood-crush-vs-cur­rent-boyfriend Tik­Tok trend (remem­ber these videos here, here and here?) proves just how strong the link between our past crush­es and cur­rent type is.

Qual­i­fied ther­a­pist and influ­encer Tasha Bai­ley has shed some light on this con­nec­tion, explain­ing how we pick up on desir­abil­i­ty cues about what soci­ety deems as attrac­tive from as ear­ly as sev­en. At this age, ​“we’re work­ing out what our rela­tion­ships can give us. So if we see a movie char­ac­ter who is cute, kind and lov­ing, our crush becomes a way we imag­ine receiv­ing that love ourselves”.

But how does that inform our adult rela­tion­ships? Bai­ley describes the link as being based on famil­iar­i­ty. Our brains are drawn to what we know, ​“so when we’re look­ing for a new part­ner the blue­print might look like the famil­iar face of a child­hood crush. [That’s why] we might realise that our ​‘type’ looks like Peter Pan or Edward Cullen years down the line”.

But once we’re out of child­hood and tak­ing those first ten­ta­tive steps into the dat­ing pool, are the heroes and hero­ines of our child­hood real­ly an attain­able goal in a prospec­tive part­ner? For the lucky ones like Juliane, one of the women who kind­ly shared her sto­ry, the answer is very much yes: ​“I grew up crush­ing on the ani­mat­ed Spi­der-Man of the 90s,” she shares, and ​“after years of dat­ing tox­ic men, I’ve final­ly met my Spi­der-Man”. Grant­ed her boyfriend doesn’t have web-sling­ing super pow­ers, but when asked about the sim­i­lar­i­ties between her child­hood crush and her real-life part­ner, Juliane tells us of the over­whelm­ing feel­ings of empa­thy, kind­ness and thought­ful­ness pro­ject­ed by both: ​“My boyfriend and the Spi­der-Man of my child­hood were both raised by women, and it shows […] I even call him Spidey!”

But whilst Juliane’s super­hero dreams have come true, many of us haven’t had quite the same expe­ri­ence. Take Cathy, for exam­ple, whose child­hood dreams of Nev­er­land nev­er-quite-land­ed: ​“I was ten the first time I saw Jere­my Sumpter in Peter Pan and remem­ber sit­ting between my mum and dad blush­ing so much,” she says, an expe­ri­ence a lot of Mil­len­ni­als can sure­ly relate to. Since then, Cathy says she has ​“Exclu­sive­ly fall­en for guys who are adven­tur­ous and sil­ly in a child­ish kind of way. Hilar­i­ous­ly, I’ve been bro­ken up with by these same guys sev­er­al times for being ​‘too grown up’”.

It’s iron­ic that the aspects of a per­son we grew up idol­is­ing can be the very things that come back to bite us. Much like Cathy, I have strug­gled to find my Aragorn in the real world. Does any man exist who is quite so gen­er­ous, so brave, so flaw­less­ly hand­some? Tolkien and Mortensen cer­tain­ly have a lot to answer for, hav­ing set the stan­dard for mil­len­ni­al expec­ta­tions of ten­der mas­culin­i­ty so high. Sure­ly we could all ben­e­fit from mak­ing the heroes of the big-screen a lit­tle more round­ed, and a lit­tle less perfect.

Bai­ley nails it when she says ​“It can be incred­i­bly dis­ap­point­ing when we realise there are no Dis­ney heroes avail­able on the dat­ing mar­ket”. To tack­le this in the real world, her advice is to ​“reflect on the qual­i­ties we admire about the char­ac­ters we fell in love with, and from there deci­pher what the healthy ver­sions of those qual­i­ties are” with­in prospec­tive part­ners. She hints that chas­ing the chival­rous and het­ero­nor­ma­tive ​‘hero’ struc­tures depict­ed by the likes of Dis­ney can often lead to heartache.

But Bailey’s views on het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty in film go beyond the pow­er dynam­ics between men and women. They also speak to the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the heroes we adored grow­ing up. These child­hood heroes not only shape our expec­ta­tions of part­ners, but also influ­ence our under­stand­ing of our sexuality.

Take Lucy, for exam­ple, who was 15 when she saw Megan Fox in Trans­form­ers: ​“I remem­ber see­ing her stand­ing over the hood of the car and feel­ing like I real­ly fan­cied her, then feel­ing very weird about it”. She also recalls she had sim­i­lar feel­ings watch­ing Miley Cyrus in her rebel era, and Keira Knight­ley as Eliz­a­beth Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean. In fact, Knightley’s Eliz­a­beth Swann is known for trig­ger­ing some­what of a sex­u­al awak­en­ing in teenage girls across the world, reck­on­ing with the fact they might be queer for the first time after see­ing Swann in all her sword-wield­ing, Pirate King glo­ry. And hon­est­ly, who can blame them? She is com­plete­ly badass and utter­ly gorgeous.

In Roxy’s case, how­ev­er, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies offered a slight­ly dif­fer­ent reck­on­ing. As some­one who was con­vinced she was gay, it was actu­al­ly the sight of Orlan­do Bloom swing­ing from the rafters that allowed Roxy to process she was also attract­ed to men: ​“I was about thir­teen when Dead Man’s Chest came out […] In an inter­view, Kiera was asked if she felt lucky get­ting to kiss the two most-fan­cied men on the plan­et. I remem­ber think­ing ​‘Wow, yes she’s so lucky, but they’re also lucky because they get to kiss her’”.

Roxy’s con­ver­sa­tions with friends at school swoon­ing over Will Turn­er allowed her to process her feel­ings: ​“I did think Orlan­do was attrac­tive, and at first I felt a bit of pres­sure to fit in, but when I real­ly thought about it I realised actu­al­ly, I do have a crush on him too.” Such was the jour­ney of 13-year-old Roxy learn­ing she was bisexual.

This is the beau­ty of film: the way in which it makes space for these kinds of con­ver­sa­tions. After all, who doesn’t leave the cin­e­ma talk­ing end­less­ly about a film they loved? Just imag­ine how much eas­i­er young peo­ple pro­cess­ing their sex­u­al­i­ty through film could have nav­i­gat­ed their feel­ings had they seen queer char­ac­ters rep­re­sent­ed in what they were watch­ing grow­ing up.

Bai­ley also sup­ports this idea, explain­ing how ​“hav­ing more queer heroes, heroes of colour, and heroes with dif­fer­ent bod­ies will not only break down the soci­etal dis­crim­i­na­tion of learn­ing who we ​‘should’ be attract­ed to, but also build self-esteem and self-iden­ti­ty for so many chil­dren”. The over­whelm­ing evi­dence of the link between our child­hood film crush­es and adult part­ners real­ly stands as tes­ta­ment to how impact­ful this kind of rep­re­sen­ta­tion could be.

As film­mak­ers take steps towards rep­re­sent­ing real, flawed, diverse and inclu­sive char­ac­ters on the big screen, the young peo­ple pop­u­lat­ing cin­e­mas today will be able to process who they are attract­ed to beyond the tra­di­tion­al hero arche­types of old. 21^st cen­tu­ry films have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to reflect our 21^st cen­tu­ry world: a time in which dis­tressed damsels don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need sav­ing, and love inter­ests should bet­ter rep­re­sent pre­vi­ous­ly neglect­ed races, gen­ders, and sex­u­al­i­ties. Imple­ment­ing this kind of vis­i­bil­i­ty on-screen will help form a broad­er idea of what soci­ety deems attrac­tive, and deep­en our col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of the won­der­ful­ly diverse world around us, paving the way for crush­es that go beyond the stereo­typ­i­cal view of the film heartthrob.