Rethinking The Paradigm Of Romantic Love

“You are free to create your own paradigms instead of simply accepting those presented to you by others.”― Russell Eric Dobda

Some may stand firm on the idea that romance culture is dying, yet others would rather claim that too much emphasis is put on romantic love. I believe that both premises can partially explain the current state of affairs in the love department.

In the modern society, romantic love is looked upon as The Ideal to attain. It is viewed as the golden prize, the security blanket to all of life’s sorrows, the answer to an uncomplete or unfulfilled existence, or put simply, the best part of human existence. Ironically, the current statistics used to display failed unions in our nation portray a rather different story. In fact, half of marriages end in divorce, and that percentage solely takes into account the spouses who are brave enough to choose to call it quits.

Why, then, do we hold on so tightly to the glamorization of romantic love if it fails us? Sooner or later, the shaky foundation of dreamy illusions on which we stand will collapse, and we’ll be left with two choices: either to reconstruct the love narrative we’ve always held for truth for one which fits better our reality, or to instead keep on reproducing the same pattern in the future with someone else. A.k.a closing our eyes to our collective delusion. It isn’t for nothing that remarriages have an even higher rate of dissolution. Never examining our fuckups only leads to more of these same fuckups in the future, only in different circumstances.

What’s more interesting to me about romantic love is the fact that it is placed higher in the hierarchy of relationships than non-romantic relationships. The paradox here is that friends remain "typically" (yes, please don’t get at me here) in our lives for a longer period of time than our lovers do. While this may be a debatable statement, the fact remains that with no other person can we be more hurtful than we can be toward our spouse. We may get the occasional fight with our friends, but they don’t usually compare to the highly emotional ones that we get into with our life partner. While saying such a sentence is incredibly damaging to a romantic partnership, "Why did I marry you? " Surely has been heard more often than "Why did I become friends with you? " Yet, the former still remains the type of relationship most individuals will look for the most throughout their lives.

Another problematic perspective in the playground of romantic partnerships has to do with its duration. Any relationship that does not bring its two partners into their grave holding each other’s hands gets labeled as a so called "failure ". Best choice of metric, isn’t!? This illustrates precisely how deeply attached we seem to be toward final outcomes, even if they do not represent the full picture of an union. However, I do understand that in certain cases, it may be justified to see things that way, such as when a relationship terminates due to a betrayal, or when the decision did not come from a mutual agreement, for instance.

Nonetheless, the evaluation we make of romantic relationships is subject to a load of biases, and surely does not correspond very well with reality as it is today, especially considering that most people will not mate with a single partner for life.