"Immoral Trading": Moral Dilemma in Love

Andreanne 2021-12-31 08:02:25

Suppose now, you have this multiple-choice question in front of you:

You are in debt and you are at the end of the day. Suddenly a billionaire appeared in front of you and said to you [If you lend me your wife for one night, you will get a million], how would you choose?

In this era when the Three Views are quite free, many people may think that this is not a problem. After all, one million is a tempting number, but maybe when the hypothesis comes true, it may not be so easy.

In 1993, someone put such a story on the big screen:

"Unethical Trading"

This American classic film is one of director Adrian Lane's "Trilogy of Affair".

The hero and heroine David and Diana are a loving couple. Because of a ruthless economic crisis and investment failure, they were at the end of their lives and even their house was mortgaged. The desperate David borrowed five thousand yuan from his father, but they then went to the casino. In one hour, David won four times more money than the principal. However, they did not expect that greed would eventually make everything into nothingness. When they went the next day, all the money was lost.

It was also at this time that the "devil" offered them a deal: the beautiful and pure Diana attracted the attention of billionaire businessmen. The wealthy businessmen put forward a multiple choice question to test love for David and his wife: 1 million, buy Diana all night.

Although they felt angry and insulted when they heard this topic, in the dead of night, the couple's hearts fell into a painful struggle.

Just sleep for a night, you can get one million, solve the urgent needs in real life, and have a better future. What's more, it's just a sacrifice of the body, Diana's mind and soul will not change.

Because Diana loved David, she offered to agree to this unethical deal, but David did not refuse. After Diana came back, the two decided not to mention it again. They thought it was just one night, and after it passed, they would gradually forget.

Unfortunately, they can't forget it at all. After being happy and loving couples, it is difficult to recover as before. Although they finally came together again, the process was full of difficulties and arduous.

This is not a derailment and affair in the conventional sense, but a test of human nature in extreme situations, but it also involves the destruction and reconstruction of choice, betrayal, and trust. If you think about it carefully, the one million billionaire businessman in the movie actually bought not Diana’s night, nor the happy future of the couple, but the most important thing between David and Diana: trust.

This movie can't help but extend us to real life: Why is it so difficult to rebuild trust in intimate relationships?

1. How is trust in intimate relationships established?

In psychology, trust is a stable belief, an overall expectation of trustworthiness in the words, promises, and statements of others.

The establishment of trust is a kind of psychological communication. After an individual weighs the interests of himself and the other, an interpersonal relationship is established after the two parties make mutual commitments.

Marriage is essentially a cooperative relationship. Since it is a cooperation, both parties can benefit from this relationship. In other words, in marriage, we have to consider not only our own needs, but also the needs of the other party. When both parties are willing to change their behavior for the benefit of the other party, trust arises.

All cooperation requires mutual trust to continue. Non-cooperative attitude will only lead to endless conflicts. If you don’t trust your partner, you will blindly maximize your own interests regardless of the other’s feelings and needs. It's selfishness.

Cooperation with trust is often a win-win situation.

From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, everyone has the need for belonging and love. This need must be based on the need for security. Only when each other is trustworthy can a sense of security be produced.

One of the functions of marriage is to establish belonging and love between two people, but this process requires two people to invest a lot of time and sacrifice their own energy to maintain it. The more trust between the partners, the more caring for each other, such partners can feel that the relationship between each other is unique and irreplaceable.

The triangle theory of love believes that love is composed of three components: intimacy, passion and loyalty. Loyalty is a unique trust. A good partner will increase the other's benefit by changing his behavior. Because in marriage, both partners are actually a whole, and happiness and benefits are related to each other.

2. How is trust in intimate relationships destroyed?

In an intimate relationship, once one of them breaks the agreement and produces a betrayal, this trust will be destroyed. No one wants to be with someone who will betray and harm their own interests anytime and anywhere. Just ask, who would be willing to sleep next to someone who would show a knife to hurt himself at any time?

Although Diana in the movie did not take the initiative to betray David, when the couple chose to let a third party (rich businessman) intervene in their relationship, everything began to become complicated: because the third party's intervention meant that an intimate relationship appeared. Once there is a comparison, jealousy and fear will follow.

Since making that transaction, David has been suspicious all day long, looking through Diana's wallet and bag, always suspecting that Diana was having a tryst with the wealthy businessman; and the details of Diana and the wealthy businessman that night, David was also always at all times. Not curious, although Diana did not contact the wealthy businessman again, David's skeptical jealousy also eroded their relationship, making the couple never return to their former intimacy.

Li Ao once said a very interesting point: "Two dogs will fight only after seeing a real bone; and two people will imagine a bone in their minds and then fight."

When the seductive devil throws out the multiple-choice questions of human nature, the mentality of gaining and losing is unavoidable; and when the couple decides to make a choice, suspicion has already been planted in the hearts of the people. After that, anger, suspicion and fear continued to take root in David's heart, the trust in the intimate relationship gradually collapsed, and the relationship between the two finally broke down.

3. Why is it difficult to rebuild trust after it is broken?

The establishment of trust takes a lot of time and energy, so once it is destroyed, it takes more time to rebuild. The pain caused by betrayal of trust will be far greater than the goodwill of fulfilling promises.

Trust can inspire trust, which is a virtuous circle, but once trust is exchanged for betrayal, the original cooperative relationship will turn into hostility and become the beginning of a vicious circle. Betrayed by the people they once trusted and loved, most people will question everything because of this: their inherent worldview collapses, the most familiar people begin to become strangers, they doubt the choices they have made, whether they ever loved each other sincerely, or even Will question the meaning of promises.

In the movie, David will involuntarily guess over and over again what happened that night, wanting to know the truth, but also afraid of getting the answer, endlessly questioning and suspicious of Diana, until the last bit of positive energy in the relationship is exhausted.

Many people who have experienced a spouse cheating will start to become sensitive and suspicious: every word he says is like a lie, and he hasn’t returned home after going out for a long time today. Did he go to see the affair? The look on the phone is the same as before. It's not the same... The betrayed person is like a frightened bird, and any wind and grass will stir his fragile and sensitive nerves.

People who have been betrayed by their partners will suffer from insomnia, neurasthenia, lack of security, and self-doubt for a long time. These are actually symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), even if they leave After getting out of danger, the person still feels that he has been in a dangerous world, experiencing hesitation and helplessness.

It is not easy to get out of this bad situation, which is why it is very difficult to rebuild trust in intimate relationships.

end

When interpreting this movie, someone said, "Sell you a wife for a million, will you sell it?" But in fact, Diana is not the one who was bought. On the contrary, she has always been the one who thinks about David and trusts him so much.

What the devil bought at a high price was actually David's trust. That was the soul of an intimate relationship.

Sometimes we underestimate the consequences of the intervention of a third party because we lack awe of human nature.

In fact, we can look at this movie from another angle: If you exchange the trust in intimate relationships for one million, would you squander it at will?

If you exchange one million for a glamorous beauty, a one-night stand, how would you choose in your daily life?

View more about Indecent Proposal reviews

Extended Reading
  • Ludwig 2022-03-27 09:01:10

    Based on the fact that both the MFA teacher and our teacher Guo Nanhong recommended this film in class, I can't help but deeply doubt the taste preferences of these older men. Such a film full of male chauvinism teases women and speculates on women, and the predicament it sets depicts women so powerless and naive, yet so pleasant from a male perspective. .

  • Haley 2022-03-26 09:01:07

    John Barry's main theme is really moving, the details of the movie are quite reliable, and the director's bed scenes are well done :P

Indecent Proposal quotes

  • Diana: Somethings are not for sale.

    John: Such as?

    Diana: Well you can't buy people.

  • David: I thought he was the better man. I know now he's not. Just got more money.