The Illusion of Romantic Love

 

 The Illusion of Romantic Love

"The origin of romantic love is a tale as old as time; the story of Adam and Eve will have us believe that God himself ordained it."

Throughout history, some of the most compelling stories that reverberate through time have been built around the theme of romantic love: Hatshepsut, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Romeo & Juliet, Helen of Troy. Yet beneath the allure of these tales lies a deeper, more uncomfortable truth: romantic love, as we commonly understand it, may be more illusion than essence.

"Romantic love is often built upon the unrealistic expectations that a fellow human will love selflessly and unconditionally. That is hardly ever the case because those expectations are often a reflection of our own insecurities, desires, wants and aspirations. This is why it's always very easy to lead a besotted romantic down the garden path."

Romantic love thrives on fantasy. The lover does not fall in love with the person per se, but with what that person represents in the lover's imagination. A vessel of projected longing, not a reality.

"Romantic love as a concept is very difficult to define or grasp. The feeling itself is a state of mind. It is more of what one feels on the inside than 'what is' on the outside. That's why a lover often sees the world through primrose glasses."

We see what we want to see. And the mirage of love is often more palatable than the mundane texture of everyday reality. We want the dream. The idea. The illusion.

"Lies sell better than truth; illusion and dreams sell better than reality. This is because as humans, we revel in confirmation bias. This is also why the king beheads the bearer of bad news, why demagogues and false prophets win over multitudes of people and why Ponzi schemes pull more people than real investment schemes. Reality is hard, harsh and unpleasant."

Romantic love flourishes in the mind because it defies the starkness of reality. It resists definition, craves narrative, and seeks to live in the realm of 'what could be' rather than 'what is'.

"Yet for men and women, it means different things. For women skilled in the art of seduction and coquetry, romantic love is often associated with power, security and material benefits, while for men it's associated with femininity, beauty and submission of the opposite sex."

The sexes do not enter romantic arenas with the same scripts. Cultural scripts—shaped by evolution and centuries of patriarchy—define love in divergent terms for men and women.

"It's a bit of both evolution and culture. Men, as the stag gender, offer protection and security in exchange for submission. This is the way of nature. Women, as the weaker sex, have to employ wiles and cunning to subdue and conquer. They stoop to conquer."

Nature does not moralize. It adapts. And romantic love, as we know it, is not exempt from this dance of instincts.

"At the very core of our being, we are instinctively animalistic. Underneath the veneer of harmless romantic love lies the undercurrent of sexual desire. A desire so strong that it has kept the flames of romantic love burning through time... In the past, the pretences of courtship, marriage, romance and chivalry were a prerequisite for sexual intercourse."

This is perhaps the bluntest truth: romantic love has always been a beautifully dressed prelude to sex. The rituals were theatre, the costumes elaborate, but the goal was primal.

"Yes, it has definitely morphed into something else. Today, romantic love, shorn of all its coatings is more naked. Romantic love amongst youth and many in this generation means partying, experimentation with drugs, clubbing, vaping, outright cheating, casual sex and crossing moral boundaries that were once held to be red lines. Unlike in the past where the art of wooing a lover was steeped in time-honoured tradition of chivalry, 'gentlemanism', 'gradualism' etc., romantic love is now often seen as something brutishly nasty, raw, and short. No longer do people enter into relationships with that 'ever after' expectation. It is now deeply transactional, stripped of its veneer of pretences. It's what it is."

Romantic love today is unmasked. Stripped of its poetic camouflage, it has emerged more transactional than transcendent. The pursuit of love has given way to the exchange of needs. And the illusion, though still alive, is now less innocent.

In truth, love has been unmasked. What remains of it is the naked negotiation between self- interest and desire. The fairytale has demystified and in its place lies the question:

What are we really searching for when we search for love?

Rumi once wrote: "The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."

But perhaps we were not looking for a person—we were looking for a feeling. A mirror. A ghost. A dream.

Oscar Wilde reminds us: "Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."

And it may well be that in all our chasing of love, we are merely chasing our reflection in another. Not seeing them—but only ourselves.

So what then is romantic love? A beautiful lie? A biological imperative? A delusion that comforts?

Maybe all three.

But one thing is certain: Romantic love is rarely what it seems.

Article by Teslim Oyetunji