Unplug From The Fantasy Of Romantic Love

Love isn’t what you think it is

It began as soon as I was born.

I was taught that one day I’m going to meet somebody that’s going to love me as much as my mother did. Even as a little boy, imagining that feeling of warmth was intoxicating.

This social conditioning was imprinted into me not just by my parents, but by popular culture too — it was everywhere I looked. The ideology of ‘true love’ was everywhere , and it still is.

It’s in our media, music, literature, movies — everything.

It still appears everywhere today. Just recently, I watched the movie Kimi no na wa (Your Name) and expectedly, experienced a film driven by the notion of soul-mates.

It truly is a beautiful and exciting fantasy.

That one day we’re going to meet someone and despite all of our flaws and insecurities, this person is going to be our perfect match and we’re going to live ‘happily ever after’.

And this fantasy sells. Just take a look at the older Disney movies. Snow White, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are a few examples of exciting, daring narratives encompassing the soul-mate myth.

The Fairy-tale of ‘True Love’

Just ask all the divorced or widowed people who have remarried after their soul-mate has passed.

True love is a very recent phenomenon too. We live in a society which has more-or-less just recently developed the idea of Romanticism.

Romanticism was a cultural movement which preferred intuition and emotion over rationalisation which began in the late 18th Century, which is relatively recent on an evolutionary scale.

Before Romanticism, people were matched and married not based on feelings, but as a ceremony to merge families together. They were matched based on social status, health and other utilitarian factors.

While Romanticism did positively shape artistic endeavours into what they are today (among many other benefits), it murdered love.

We learned from Romanticism that despite all our insecurities, depression and in general fuck-ups, this person is going to save us from it all — like two puzzle pieces perfectly fitting together.

It taught us to follow our instincts. That when we meet someone who is a match for us, we’re going to know it.

But what if our instincts are fucked up?

You Can’t Blindly Trust Your Feelings

It’s not uncommon to find that we go on a date with someone, and while they’re checking off every point on our mental checklist (educated, healthy, funny, etc.), we don’t ‘feel’ it.

It’s not that this person isn’t good for us, but that they don’t make us suffer the way we want to.

We seek the love we first experience.

We’d like to think of ourselves as completely rational beings, but we don’t seek the love that is good for us — we want what is familiar. Emotional triggers are formed in childhood, and every time we meet someone that treats us in a similar way that our caregivers did, we feel the rush of emotion.

This is what we call ‘chemistry’.

And our caregivers aren’t perfect. Pardon my language, but no matter who you are, you’re carrying a bag of shit passed on to you by your caregivers. Some people might have bigger bags of shit, but we all have a bag of shit nonetheless.

And we look for people who fill our bag of shit.

This is why we have the cultural meme of the ‘girl with daddy issues’ experiencing Stockholm Syndrome for her neglectful boyfriend. It’s why the abandoned child only feels that love is real when their partner displays signs of leaving them and why the spoiled kid experiences love when their partner gives them whatever they want (and feels unloved when their partner can’t offer it).

A Critique on Instinct

Worst of all, Romanticism’s education on ‘instinct’ as a form of love has destroyed rationalisation in relationships. Talking is seen as a sign of not being able to understand each other.

If we’re having a fight with our partners and they don’t seem to understand us, it can often feel as if they don’t love us anymore. We can feel our enmeshed identity separating itself from the relationship.

We could explain to them what the problem is, but if they really loved us wouldn’t they already understand?

The reality is that we are a little crazy. We might not think it, but we certainly have unhealthy reactions to normal occurrences. And nobody will truly understand our crazy. Our parents, our friends and even our partners will never truly understand us. And we will never truly understand them.

To understand each other better, we should be communicating. And when instinct isn’t enough, we should talk.

Being grounded in reality will reduce the amount of pitfalls and tum-drops you experience in your relationships. You’ll be more inclined to discuss features of relationships that will improve them, rather than sulk that things aren’t perfect.

These might include:

Setting emotional and physical boundaries

Household duties

Money management

While these are unsexy topics to talk about, they add to the framework of a healthy relationship — likely helping you produce a more sustainable one. I hope you’re getting the hang of my critique against Romanticism (and that I expressed the points well). I wish for you healthy and sustainable relationships in the future.

Bye.