LOVE CYNICISM IN THE MODERN AGE
A personal essay on coming to terms with the desire for love in an age that views romance as unnecessary.
Farah Sadek
“Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.”
In her acclaimed book All About Love, the late bell hooks examines the trials and tribulations of love and its many manifestations. All About Love remains one of the most realistic and equally sweet, but not saccharine, takes on modern love. Whether hooks speaks on familial, platonic, or romantic love, she knows that these varying forms each serve a purpose. It would seem futile to argue about the validity and importance of each one, regardless of what each person values the most. But disregarding romantic love has become the norm when we examine our current cultural zeitgeist.
One key example of this is the Netflix standup special Jigsaw created by Scottish stand-up comedian Daniel Sloss, who argues that we have a love-crazed culture:
“We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love and everything's perfect on the outside when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20s, we're so terrified.”
Sloss goes on to talk about relationships and how in his view, most of them are essentially bullshit because they’re not “as easy as breathing”. To Sloss, compromising is silly because it means you change yourself for someone else (even if that compromise is small). Toward the end of the special, he says that a relationship's outcome is too risky for people to romanticize love and that we ought to be more realistic.
Sloss has sparked a movement with this special per his Twitter bio, where he proudly states that he has inspired 350,000 breakups and 600 divorces and counting. He alleges that these separations wouldn’t have occurred if they hadn’t seen his speech and that if it were “true love,” they would’ve stayed together. While Sloss' cynicism about romance does stem from his lived experiences, you cannot help but notice how depressing his viewpoint is. Pretending that romanticising romance is inherently harmful is equally silly as not being realistic about love—two extremes for a rather personalised subject. Love isn’t surgery, thankfully, but I wonder about the narrative presented when we ask, is it better to love and lose than to never love at all?
The idea that love is a losing game changes the narrative of relationships to be one-sided. Love and relationships aren’t things that happen to you. There are going to be difficult days, there’s going to be work that needs accomplishing, and it’s not going to be 50/50 every single day, but hopefully, it will be equal cumulatively.
There is no doubt that Sloss' point of view is becoming increasingly popular among younger people, especially women. But unfortunately, I cannot shake off the horror stories I encounter on social media or when I catch up with my friends. Whether through dating apps or the more traditional ways of finding dates, there's no guarantee that you will come out of a date unscathed, let alone with a potential friend or partnership.
If you trace it back to the start of the 20th century, you would realize it’s an understandable reaction and rebellion against the traditional roles of womanhood and marriage that were forced upon women for centuries and still are today. At some point, rejecting the notion of romantic love was the only way to protect and prioritize your personhood as a woman. Of course, women still have to grapple with misogyny, patriarchy, and safety, as we see with the 4B movement in Korea. However, for those of us who do want to take a chance to find love via our generation's dating scene, there seems to be a constant stream of challenges that we need to face.
The modern dating scene has become such a violent ordeal that sometimes one questions if it's even worth going through. When speaking to a friend about dating, they told me that the worst part is that it feels that the bare minimum has become a hurdle to overcome. First, you make sure the person you're talking to isn’t a bigot, but it's become challenging to figure out because, as it turns out, the most staunch-looking activists use that front to fool people. Then, once you figure that out, you must uncover if you're remotely compatible and/or if they're even a good person. Who wants to go through all of that time and time again?
Having that conversation with my friend reminded me of the types of people I encounter every day. Those who share sexist jokes claim deniability because "you just don't understand dark humor.” Or my male acquaintances who smile slyly at me as I talk about my ambitious career plans. Perhaps those who share clips of random podcasts where two men talk about what a woman should be like.
The truth is, I've never been in a relationship before, except for the occasional talking stage here and there. Often, people are shocked when I reveal that information to them, mainly due to how fondly I speak about romance. When you enjoy love, everyone assumes you’ve experienced it on a deep level. I was always embarrassed to tell people this for quite some time. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but admitting this felt like I was admitting I was unlovable, undesirable, and unpleasant to be around.
I was a late bloomer to love. I don't remember having crushes as a teenager—it’s almost like I knew it was not something I wanted to concern myself with. Maybe it was due to my conservative upbringing and my monumental teenage "not like other girls” syndrome, but in hindsight, I know now it was right for me to wait until now to find love.
As I grew older, I longed for it with everything I had, but in the same way, I would long for a dream that can only be achieved much later on in life, the same way I see myself being a prestige filmmaker. Whenever I discussed this with people, I often received a lot of unsolicited advice and free psychoanalysis.“You don’t need relationships. Have you tried investing more into your friendships?” I already have the best friendships. “Get more hobbies!” I have enough hobbies for a small village. My favorite response is, “focus on your career," this article proves that I am doing just that.
Whilst on Tiktok, I came across two videos on this topic, one by Vanessa Ifediora, who you might have seen on Derry Girls and Belfast. Vanessa talks about her life and how she has done everything under the sun, from hobbies to travelling to focusing on her career, but she always felt that that didn’t get her the emotional intimacy she craved. Lo and behold, when she found a good and respectful partner, those problems disappeared. Not because a partner can heal you but because sometimes having a partner can give you the strength to fulfil those cravings.
The other creator I came across, Zoe Tyler, says in a skit that telling women unhelpful things about their desire for romantic companionship is just as silly as telling someone hungry to be comfortable with the “growling contractions of their stomach” before they eat. It’s infantilizing when you say that you want to fall in love one day only to get told, “you need to learn to be independent and be comfortable in your aloneness.” It’s the same “no one will love you if you don’t love yourself” conversations circulated on social media over the past decade. We perpetuate a narrative that everyone in a happy relationship has worked on themselves and is perfect, which is a myth because growth doesn't have a finish line. It's something that you constantly have to do as your circumstances change. People don’t need to be perfect to find love—they need to be willing to be the best version of themselves at that time.
At some level, I understand almost every side of this argument of love vs protecting yourself. When I have conversations with women around me, I know that we cultivated our individualism out of self-preservation and that it’s a rebellion against societal norms.
On the other hand, I can't deny my truth; I want to have it all, and I'm coming to terms with accepting that my choice to love romance despite everything that says otherwise can be my most significant and most effective rebellion. Will we as a society move forward to viewing love and romance with less cynicism? I’m not sure, but perhaps we can start by being more open to love individually, even if those acts are small, like enjoying rom-coms like Bridget Jones Diary (2001) without feeling embarrassed.
Farah Sadek is an Egyptian journalist and interviewer. She mainly writes about Film, TV, and culture. When she’s not doing that, you can find her on Twitter advocating for a Paddington 2 Oscar win.
