Charlotte Wong explores the systems that are entrenched in how romantic love is perceived.

Like Jo March, I thought my dreams and platonic love would be enough to fulfil me, but as you get older and you see all your friends slowly get into relationships, it’s hard not to wonder: “Am I doing something wrong?”.

The logical answer is no. Of course not. I am well-educated in notions of societal pressure on romantic love. The emphasis it is given more than any other type of human relationship is not exactly hard to notice. With the teenage love present in every coming of age movie, the grand romance you see in all forms of media, the soft hue that seems to only come with the tenderness of young love, it’s hard not to feel like you are greatly missing out on something that is so essential to the human experience. But… My notions of romantic love are complicated to say the least.

Look, it’s not exactly that I don’t believe in love, but I think true love is hard to come by. One that is compatible, gentle and HEALTHY combined with being at the right time, in the right place and life stages does not exactly have the most probable chance. I’ve seen enough bad relationships both online and offline to know that a lot of people are in relationships that may look good but aren’t exactly good.

I do think my constant journey on ‘understanding’ the Patriarchy and how deep its claws go has affected me the most. In no way am I saying it made me believe in love less, but it DID make me more conscious of what actual love is and how much of what is sold to us is just patriarchy wrapped in a pretty bow with the word “benevolent” added in front. It made me reflect and rethink whether what I viewed as love was something that was grounded in actual notions of genuine care or is it funded by seeds sown by male fantasies.

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”

– Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

The encouragement of the infantilisation of women by relieving control in a relationship, ‘turning off my brain’, financial dependency on men (some not even husbands) and the insane rhetoric of back in my ‘feminine energy’ pisses me off to no end. I am literally on my knees begging for us to not regress but every time I see another TikTok boasting about the ‘sprinkle, sprinkle’ method, part of me dies and never comes back. Why is the popularised notion of romantic love so inherently tied to relieving control? We may actually never get out of this patriarchy hell hole due to our own resistance to autonomy.

Finding romantic love can feel so all-consuming; it is sometimes a constant want that eclipses every other aspect of your life. But it’s important to consider what the agenda is behind this kind of marketing for romantic love. Is it to commodify and distort one of the most important human emotions to a point where we no longer know how to identify it? Is it to market a false solution to the impending collapse of the unsustainable system we are under? We have to teach ourselves to question what is being pushed to us. Is it to strip us of our autonomy, is it to make us less independent? Is this a desire born out of want or just a desire for relief?

We have to confront the possibility that more than the ‘natural desire for love’, the desperate yearning also stems from the need to escape capitalism. It is an attractive idea that romantic love will shield us from the responsibilities of being a fully fledged adult, having to bear the entire financial burden of just living. Yes, I get it, the economy is shit, job markets are shit, but financial dependency on anyone is dangerous, and especially naive when you have the choice to not make unwise decisions like this. We all want to exist without labour, exist and be taken care of. But part of what comes with more autonomy is also more responsibility and more accountability. The capitalist idea of “princess treatment” is an ignorant glorification of the unseen, unappreciated labour of the service industry. The sweatshops behind the trendy clothes, the underpaid nail techs, etc. That is why we cannot succumb to selling out our own autonomy for the false promise of eternal financial stability and a paternalistic relationship. We cannot grow tired of steering our own path, or showing up for ourselves, we cannot resent our own autonomy, especially when that false promise is at the cost of other people. We cannot be regressing.

So… what is the solution?

It’s only human to crave love, support, someone that cherishes you as a person. Only, we may need to shift our focus to something with consistency, integrity and genuine care. To extend that desire beyond what is defined under capitalism and the patriarchy. Romantic love is not the heal-all cure-all balm of all and it will do us as a society much good to remember that.