I love romantic comedies. I’ve seen almost all of them. Yes—all of them. One of my most memorable sexual experiences involved me and my date watching the movie “Along Came Polly,” and sex almost didn’t happen because I wanted to finish watching the movie. Those movies are my favorite, but they have also ruined my life. Every relationship I’ve been involved in, I’ve tried to imagine what romantic comedy that relationship would turn out to be.

However, life is not a romantic comedy. In real life, there are very real reactions to romantic comedy movie plots. I recently decided to try to relate my past experiences to figure out where I went wrong. I found five movies and related them to five of my real-life experiences involving romance.

1. Blind Date

This movie stars Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger. It involves an overworked man and his plan to take a blind date out for drinks. She doesn’t often drink and “gets crazy when she gets drunk.” Hilarity ensues.

In real life, I was working every night for a month in 2012. I hadn’t been on a date for a while, and my friend Chris and a girl he dated decided to introduce me to a friend of hers. They exclaimed, “It will be a blind date!” and while I lamented the idea, I begrudgingly agreed. Before we went up to meet her at a bar called Evil Olive in Chicago, we had some drinks. There I was informed that the girl I had planned to meet “often shits herself when she does cocaine.” I said that was no problem because I had no intentions of bringing cocaine into the evening. As it turned out, the BMs in her pants were a part of her “getting crazy when she does cocaine,” which she partook in a lot. The night continued with frequent trips to the bathroom, her dancing on the bar, her making out with her ex-boyfriend outside, and her one final trip to the bathroom that resulted in her not coming out. Chris’s date came out to inform us that we should take off and that they would be fine getting home on their own. I couldn’t help but think it involved an accident in the bathroom and I rushed home. The movie Blind Date failed me. Craziness after a substance was involved, but I didn’t end up with Kim Basinger in the end; I ended up with a date whose pants were full of shit.

2. Failure to Launch

This is about a man who lives at home with his parents. They hire a woman to woo him and remove him from their household. They choose an incredibly expensive passive-aggressive method as opposed to simply asking him to leave because they feel bad that his previous fiancée died. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the lady whose profession is removing men from their parents’ house, and Matthew McConaughey (one of the most interesting men in film and one of my favorite actors) plays the “slacker” who won’t leave his parents’ house.

In real life, I lived with my parents after college. For a while I wouldn’t leave, trying to put off paying rent somewhere for as long as I could. One night I pretended to live at my friend’s house while he was out of town and I was supposed to check up on the house at times. I brought a woman to his house, and after several attempts to have sex on his love seat, she demanded we go to the bedroom. She kept wondering why I wouldn’t get under the covers, and by the morning, she noticed several bills, pieces of mail, and pictures that had nothing to do with me. She said “never again” and walked out. I soon moved out of my parents’ house, no expensive Sarah Jessica Parker type needed—just the realization that almost all straight adult women tend to enjoy the company of men who have their own place to sleep. Matthew McConaughey made me believe they didn’t. Failure to Launch failed me.

3. Chasing Amy

This is a story about comic-book artists Ben Affleck and Joey Lauren Adams and their desire to have sex with each other. Joey Lauren Adams is a lesbian who has a girlfriend, and Ben Affleck is a man who is in love with her. He believes that his deep love for her is more important than her sexual orientation, so he pursues her. They have sex, he figures out she experimented with men prior to her realizing she was a lesbian, gets mad, and they don’t have sex anymore. She ends up with a woman, and he ends up trying to date women who prefer men.

In real life, I have always had lesbian friends. I have many friends; some of them naturally happen to be lesbians, just as some of them happen to be many different things. I hung out with a particular girl a lot while I was in college, and, inspired by the movie, I decided my love for her was very important despite the fact that she had a girlfriend. I pursued her, we got drunk, and we had sex once. I discovered she had experimented with men before and didn’t care at all. However, her girlfriend felt differently, and at a party weeks later she punched me in the mouth. I still have a scar. We never had sex again (her choice). I learned my lesson.

4. Boomerang

This is a story about ad exec Eddie Murphy being a player. He has had sex with a lot of women, wears suits a lot, and doesn’t have sex with one woman more than twice. He also has an interesting obsession with women’s feet. He has the upper hand in most relationships until he meets Robin Givens, who is really good at sex. She is so good that he falls for her. She is the player, though, and only wants to use him for sex a couple of times. Hilarity ensues as he continues to pursue her, even while Halle Berry is trying to have sex with him. He still works with Robin Givens, but he eventually ends up with Halle Berry.

In real life, I have had sex with a good amount of women. Usually, I meet women after shows, meet them through a friend, or just meet them at bars. Then one day, I met a girl who pursued me sexually. She also happened to be really good at sex. She was so good that I tried to see if I could hang out with her all the time. She said sure, but she still planned on pursuing sex with other people. Then sex with other people became sex with “not me.” Then she eventually moved away from Chicago. Halle Berry was nowhere to be found in my life. I also realized I didn’t really know anything about her and just figured good sex was enough for a relationship. She knew better. Women are smart. I was not.

5. Friends With Benefits

This is a story about Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis being very good friends who are both having trouble in their respective sex lives. While out at a bar, they come to the conclusion that since they were such good friends, they could just have sex to pass the time until they each got into relationships. While they are continuing to have sex, they both discover they are in love with each other and should be together. They believe that sex jeopardized their friendship and they can never go back to just being friends. They end up together…obviously.

In real life, I know a female who is a very good friend. A couple of months after we met and became very good friends, we were at a bar discussing being single and the troubles around it. I came to the conclusion that since we were such good friends, she and I could have sex until we got into relationships. I brought it up, and she said “Absolutely not.” I said “Yep…I was kidding.” We are still friends today.

I love Rom Coms, but now I know better. I will not try to live my life like a romantic comedy ever again…unless I write about it after I live it.