One of my favorite things to do is to write resounding negative reviews of movies I have not seen in full. You might wonder how I can justify this. After all (you argue), movies can and do turn themselves around at the eleventh hour, which means I’m not giving them their due process. True. But I don’t feel obligated to string myself along in hopes of a cinematic miracle.

The most recent movie I turned off early in disgust is called The Tutor, about a teacher who is paid an unnatural sum of money to privately tutor a billionaire’s son. The tutor is begrudgingly handsome, a nerdy intellect who seems like he stumbled into his good looks almost by accident. I liked that about his character. The kid he is tutoring, a 17-year-old high school student, is freakishly unnerving, with dagger eyes and the complexion of a baby. That too worked for me. 

My problem started when the tutor was drugged and thrown in a lake, presumably by the boy with the dagger eyes. He managed to haul himself out, after which he stumbled home to his pregnant fiancé many hours later than expected. He burst in the door, still dripping wet and no doubt suffering a terrible come-down, to find his fiancé boiling mad at his tardiness.

“Where were you?” she demanded to know.

“I was drugged and I woke up in a lake,” he said.

She was unmoved by this information. It was if her fiancé had come home late with this same tired story about being drugged and thrown in a lake one too many times. There would be no sympathy for the poor, dripping, hungover, accidentally handsome tutor. No offer of a meal (I don’t know about you, but I’m always famished after waking up high on a lake bottom). No black coffee, even. What a gal. 

I tried to put myself in the fiancé’s shoes. I imagined my husband coming home dripping wet hours later than expected and explaining he had been drugged and woke up in a lake, and what I’m crystal clear about is that I would have a few questions. These would be, in order of appearance and all of them with italics somewhere in the sentence, “You what?” “In a lake?” “Drugged?” “Who did that?” “Why?” and lastly, “Are you all right?”

But granted, I am not pregnant, nor have I ever been pregnant, and so it’s possible the rules of engagement around your partner being drugged and thrown in a lake are different when you are with child. Maybe being pregnant gives you some sort of a pass where compassion and humanity and heck, even everyday curiosity are concerned. Maybe, when you are pregnant and your significant other has been drugged and thrown in a lake, the only possible response to their subsequent late arrival is self-righteous indignation.

Still, the fiancé’s failure to respond in a way that any sensible, nonpregnant human would respond was, for me, the first and last nail in the coffin of this movie. I threw the remote at the TV and stormed off to bed.

But I could not stop thinking about the exchange. Maybe it’s my background as a therapist and a writer, two professions where it’s vitally important that you say exactly what you mean, that makes me so critically attuned to (and frustrated with) movie (and real life) dialogue that misses the point.

Early in our relationship, my husband and I established a no BS rule, which, for us, meant that we would communicate often and clearly, and always truthfully. This is perhaps why, sometime in our first decade of togetherness, we were equally amused by an exchange we heard in the movie, “White Men Can’t Jump.” Harrelson’s girlfriend, played by Rosie Perez, was complaining that when she was thirsty, Harrelson got her a glass of water, which was not what she wanted.

“What SHOULD I should I do when you say you are thirsty?” Harrelson asks, perplexed.

“You shouldn’t try to fix it,” Perez says. Instead, he should empathize. He should say, “I understand. I, too have been thirsty before.”

At the time we heard this, my husband and I howled over the stilted ridiculousness of this exchange. Because we both enjoyed it so much, it became, and remains, our go-to response when either of us feels bad. Have a headache? “I’m sorry. I, too have had a headache.” Back pain? “I’m sorry. I, too have experienced back pain.” About the only ailment this response could not be deployed for was menstrual cramps, but that did not matter, because when you have menstrual cramps, you might as well be that drug-and-lake flouting fiancé, for all you can hear your partner’s wooden attempts at empathy.

Years ago, in a family therapy session, my father became angry at our therapist, who was pressing him about the implication of something my father said.

“Everything means something to you, doesn’t it?” my father said accusingly, which was, in an otherwise serious moment, quite funny. Of course everything meant something to the therapist. It was his job to suss out the meaning of everything that was said.

Same with dialogue, I think. What’s the point of even talking if you’re not really listening, if all you hear when someone tells about their drugged lake swim is the sound of your own agenda?

The next time your significant other comes home with a fantastical tale like the one above, notice if there are telltale signs. Are they dripping? Are they giggling, or perhaps very sleepy? If so, maybe show a little interest in their experience. Even if you yourself have never been drugged and thrown in a lake. Even, dare I say, if you are with child.