Great Life Great Love

By Liz H Kelly

If you’re one of the 500 million users on Facebook, you must see The Social Network with Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO), Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker, Napster Founder), Rashida Jones (Marylin Delpy) and Rooney Mara (Erica Albright, Mark’s girlfriend.) Even though the breakup in the opening scene is fiction, you’ll be glued to Mark’s comeback story about how he built Facebook. We actually get two love lessons from this movie, the made-up story and Mark’s real life love story.

What we learned about love from the breakup in this movie is that heartache can inspire greatness. While my breakup advice is to just say Next, the pain can be so bad that it can make you go to extremes. When Mark gets dumped by Erica in a college bar, he runs back to his Harvard dorm room (even though the movie is filmed at Johns Hopkins University), stays up all night, and proceeds to come up with a brilliant new program called, Facesmash. Guys get to vote on which woman is more attractive, and it gets so many hits that he becomes a programmer in demand. While the movie could have depicted women in a more positive light, the programming world is heavily populated with men, which makes it believable.

In real life, Mark Zuckerberg has been dating the same girl, Priscilla Chan, for a long time (they met at Harvard in 2004, the same year that he came up with Facebook). When Mark moved to Silicon Valley, Priscilla went with him and was part of the business startup team (now that would have been a better movie showing women in a leadership role.) I actually think Mark and Priscilla sat in front of me at the Facebook Improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. They sure looked like their photo, but you just don’t ask celebs in la-la land. The theater had a row blocked off for him, and my Facebook friend was certain that it was Mark.

When faced with the pain of the Hollywood breakup in The Social Network, instead of getting depressed, take that energy and put it towards finding a new relationship and/or starting a new business. And if you want some more ideas for finding great love, give us a call for Love Coaching. We can help you build a Great Life to attract Great Love – or you can always try to call Mark Zuckerberg for advice.

© Liz H Kelly, Great Love Reporter, Great Life Great Love, http://greatlifegreatlove.com