Such diffidence is not fully justified, however. Romantic stories are often associated to a reiteration of patriarchal stereotypes of dominance and female submission ( Radway, 1991), and their dismissal has possibly favored a “cooling down” of the frequency of terms relating to inner emotional states within 20th century literature ( Acerbi, Lampos, Garnett, & Bentley, 2013). The awareness of this potential risk has sparked social attitudes of detachment and skepticism as to the experiential value of romantic fiction ( Dowd & Pallotta, 2000). This is especially true for romantic fiction, where the temptation to lure the audience into escapist fantasies built around unrealistic situations and characters, that merely accommodate their wishful (romantic) thinking, is strong ( Johnson & Holmes, 2009), and may have negative effects in real-life ( Galloway, Engstrom, & Emmers-Sommer, 2015). The pursuit of the balance between hedonic (aimed at the search for pleasure) and eudemonic (aimed at the search for knowledge and human development) elements is one of the most critical, delicate aspects of the subtle art of fictional narration ( Oliver & Raney, 2011). Our research makes a case for a renewed interest toward romantic fictional comedies as an interesting source of insight into real mating-related interactions, provided that such narratives are socially validated in terms of audience response and intergenerational transmission. In view of this, the fact that the long-term couple is not formed at the end of the story neither jeopardizes its social cognition valence, nor the audience’s need and expectation of an emotional climax, as what makes the difference in terms of social cognition is not the story outcome, but the process that leads to it. We look at romantic fictional narratives as possible simulations with a social cognition valence, and show that, in the case study under exam, the actual structure of the interaction between the two main characters reflects the basic steps of a successful mating process. This article explores the structure of the male–female interaction in the human mating process from the perspective of the so-called Tie-Up Theory, applying it to the analysis of a cinematic fictional narrative, namely the Shakespeare in love movie.