Love Is Worth Believing In

If you’re going to fall for anything in modern life it should be another person

Screenshot: TikTok, @princesspellow

Something often said about my generation is that we’ve lost hope. We’ve lost belief in the future. We’ve lost belief in ourselves. What’s less talked about, though, is that we’ve lost belief in love. We think romance is dead.

What killed it? Social media, for a start, which promised connection before turning flirting into wuu2 and flame emojis. We can message each other when we’re apart now, great, but some also think texting counts as a date. We can stay connected, cool, but we also turned teenage love into swiping, sending nudes, and tracking Snapchat scores. And whoops, looks like we accidentally taught young people that you find love by advertising yourself like a product, that love is hanging out with someone until they meet someone hotter or better at marketing themselves. Might be why so many of us are anxious, insecure, and giving up. Just a guess.

Then dating apps, which promised to make falling in love faster, easier, more convenient. Maybe it’s cool that we can order food from a million restaurants on Deliveroo now, but “catch feelings for as many people as you want”? Great that Amazon deliveries are quicker, and Spotify finds songs faster, but falling in love? Should that be more efficient? Is there any need to INCREASE YOUR MATCH-MAKING POTENTIAL BY UP TO 25% or SPEED UP THE PROCESS? Not sure that’s how love works. Yes, the internet made things more convenient. But sometimes I think it put everything within my generation’s reach, put the world at our fingertips, while making the only things that really matter, like romantic love, feel utterly unreachable.

And if we weren’t demoralised enough, mainstream media seems to be on a constant crusade against romantic love. We are reminded, relentlessly, that it isn’t real. There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love, According to Science! Romantic love is a dangerous myth, and here’s why we don’t need it. We are helpfully informed that it was invented by Hollywood and Disney and card companies, and be careful, because this creates unrealistic expectations. Stop watching romcoms, they warn us, they’re bad for you, while we watch violent and degrading porn. Stop reading romance novels, they warp your idea of love, while we shop for each other on apps. Thank God they’re warning us of the dark side of believing in true love! Could’ve been dangerous.

What’s realistic, apparently, is arguing all the time. Some cheating, here and there. Utter contempt for your spouse. That’s part of it! It’s funny, actually. Makes for good anniversary cards. It’s normal that the scariest part of lockdown for many people was trying to SURVIVE spending time with the love of their life. Marriage is being annoyed by someone forever. Meanwhile we sneer at men expressing love. We mock love that lasts. If you want that kind of love we smile at you like you’re a naive child. You’re so young; maybe even unwell. Healthy people know romantic love is unrealistic! They’re enough on their own. They love themselves instead.

But here’s the thing: of all my concerns about this generation and love, unrealistic expectations are probably last on the list. The real threat to our love lives isn’t unrealistic expectations; it’s having no expectations at all. Many of us don’t believe romantic love is real. We don’t believe loyalty is real. We seem to think that if we are selfless and surrender to someone we’ll get nothing back, so why bother. As far as I can tell, we have so little faith in love, in loyalty, in anything lasting.