social media didn’t kill romance, you did

We know ficitional couples by heart, but we barely can tell what healthy love looks like.

Whenever I ask my single girl friends what kind of relationship they crave, I get the same answers. Not one of them says their parents, grandparents or their friends. I have never heard them admire real-life couples they see on the street.

They stick to the classics - Elizabeth and Darcy (Pride and Prejudice), Rapunzel and Eugene (Tangled), Noah and Allie (The Notebook), Juliette and Warner (Shatter me series), Kat and Patrick (10 things I hate about you), Padme and Anakin (Star Wars episode I - III), Evelyn and Celia (Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), Bridget and Rhys (Twisted Games) and so on. They mention fictional couples, celebrities or people they’ve never met but somehow are trying to relate to.

You may wonder why there’s so many examples? They all have one thing in common - the willingness to sacrifice everything for love. When we say ‘I wish to be in love like them,’ we are not choosing couples, we are choosing fantasies that shape how we expect future relationships to look. Expectations save our lives and set boundaries but they also make perfectionism go crazy and we all want our love life to be perfect. The fact is, it never is. I’ve always wanted to have my own Mr. Darcy or my own Anakin, but I’m not an english lady nor the galactic senator and queen. I’ve always been obsessed with romance. I looked at my high school friends with jealousy when they started dating, then sat alone in my room binge-watching “Normal People” or replaying “La La Land,” wondering if I was more like Mia or Marianne.

Fictional people are safe to love. Mr. Darcy will never ghost you because Jane Austen won’t let him. Noah will always write the letters, because that’s how the story has to go. Aaron Warner will never wake up one day and decide he isn’t ready for commitment. Eugene will always climb the tower because every fairytale knows when love is supposed to arrive. Their love is guaranteed, ours isn’t. Real people don’t get a script. They get bad days, bad timing, insecurities, and the possibility of leaving.

I know it feels good to be a hopeless romantic, rewatching the same movie or rereading the same romance book and saving up favourite fanarts, edits of characters. I remember craving the perfect book boyfriend, which was Aaron Warner from the “Shatter me” series. I was obsessed with him and remember gasping at every edit about him. I still can recite from heart the “You’ve bewitched me body and soul” scene from Pride and Prejudice. I still cry when I hear for the 100th time Noah saying “My dearest Allie”. And I know what you might think about me “bitch is lucky because she found love on a dating app and came here to judge us because we don’t believe in those”. And honestly? That’s a valid reaction. But the thing is I’m not someone who would promote using dating apps. I’m not someone who says my boyfriend was perfect from the beginning. We both met after getting out of toxic relationships and it took us some time to understand what kind of love we need and what makes us feel like in a movie. The thing is to notice potential in somebody and a good soul. Because you can work on so many behaviors and your expectations when someone has good intentions toward you and is willing to change for you, and that doesn’t come just from a pretty face and good body.

“The Notebook”, 2004 dir. Nick Cassavetes

We crave something that is perfect in its imperfection. We have a certain vision for the arguments the couple have - one person storming out, the other runs after them after they realise they were wrong. No silent treatment or overcoming the guilt. A certain vision for their issues - they decide to take a break from each other but end up chasing and running through an airport for the kiss that proves “it’s not over”. We don’t fantasize about arguing about work schedules, or shopping at 9PM together or trying to drop hints on perfect birthday gifts. We deny that even perfection is imperfect and relationships are made up of people, carefully written scripts. All those imperfections make the relationships real and give you reason to talk with your partner, be honest to each other and try to understand them more.

I remember being truly embarrassed to admit to my friends I’ve met my boyfriend on a dating app. We demonise them, assuming there is always something unsafe waiting there. That dating apps killed romance, but this is the twenty-first century and we won’t get spotted as the mysterious beauty at movies. We won’t be seen getting fruits at the market in Italy and then wait a year for the lover to finally find us. We meet on social media, dating apps - ghost, go on terrible dates, block numbers, delete and download apps again to just keep trying. I went on terrible dates with people I met online, and each one taught me what to avoid and what to notice.

My boyfriend isn’t a book boyfriend pinned to Pinterest boards. He’s a guy who was raised by his mother and taught to notice small things. I didn’t go on dates with him because he was just pretty or smart, but because when we had to pick a movie for the date, he never questioned me. I said I wanted to see “Priscilla” and he said “When are you free?”.Because he asked me out with a paper ring after I told him I love Taylor Swift. Because when I told him I consider letters romantic, he wrote them for a year. I’ve spent years thinking a romantic gesture was a monologue after you walk through fog to your lover, but in reality love is driving an hour so I wouldn’t have to get home alone, or understand when I need touch, silence or advice.

Many of us learn what healthy love looks like through relationships that didn’t show it first. Every generation inherits its romantic fantasies from the media it grows up with. Just like I used to save pictures of my favourite characters, I remember when my grandmother showed me a file full of magazines cut outs of her favourite singer. I had a picture of Darcy’s hand flex for so long on my wall it reminded me how my mother had pages from her favourite romance book. We’re fluent in fictional romance but illiterate in ordinary love.