Are we the Generation that made Passion out of Fashion?
This February, I’ve been curled up watching the messy romance movies of the past in an attempt to understand why I am so drawn to them as someone who prides herself on being a logical person. And it made me notice that I felt something very different after watching them as compared to some of the love stories of today. I felt alive. They stirred feelings in me that defied the rational part of my brain I choose to follow. Somewhere between the tearful and heated moments I was observing on my screen, I realized something. Love used to be a very melodramatic thing.
Up until this last decade of human history, romance was something that was associated with bravado, grand gestures and trembling outbursts of unbridled passion. Something you were almost a victim of-that you had no choice but to be completely swept up in. Often, it was presented as a kind of mysterious force that stood outside of logic and defied reason. It couldn’t be explained and nor did it ask to be. But now, imagining two starry eyed lovers embraced in long winded declarations of their feelings spoken breathlessly two inches from each other’s faces seem impossible to imagine-even just on screen in today’s modern world.
When we listen to the romantic experiences of the baby boomer generation, many of the love stories between couples were grandiose, and a lot of things that now sound over the top and hard to imagine people actually doing now were simply commonplace back then. Picking girls up at the door with flowers before a date, writing love letters, opening doors and the formal role courtship was given in life back then feel completely alien in today’s dating landscape. But taking off the rose tinted glasses of the past for a moment, the reality was there were a lot of very unhealthy dynamics in love back then too.
Subsequent generations witnessed the effects of unfair gender norms, the real consequences of the romantic notions of “fix what is broken instead of throw it away”. Which often ended up seeing people stuck for lifetimes in unhappy marriages, layering on years of resentment and settling instead of any kind of meaningful “fixing”. It wasn’t as though this was the case all the time, but it was enough to cause the next generation to want to avoid falling into the dynamics they grew up seeing. But as often happens, our efforts to leave those things in the past and not continue toxic cycles, caused a hard pendulum swing in the other direction.
In our efforts to not to fall victim to the mistakes of the past, over correction becomes the new trap we set for ourselves. Now we’re all extremely well versed in boundaries, therapy speak, bare minimums and dating psychology. Comparatively, our access to people is higher than ever, yet the standards are also much higher than they ever were before. It feels like there is a missing piece of the puzzle, a loss in the art of longing. As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about the watering down of romance. How we went from love letters and standing outside of windows with boom boxes to being afraid to write captions on an instagram post for fear of being perceived as too much, performative or cringe. We’ve become so logical that passion is viewed as embarrassing and so self-aware that it becomes impossible to ever be consumed by things like feelings anymore.
The result is, our lives are so well optimized now that we’re completely protected from the danger of losing ourselves in intensity. But then, we simultaneously complain about the way life seems to lack colour now. Things feel beige. In our desperate desire to protect our peace and harness a sense of control, we have left no room for the imperfection that allows real feelings to form. The fact that we are so protective of ourselves means we also don’t allow ourselves to experience the freedom of love or passion in the way that past generations did. So we romanticize eras that we say we want, but at the same time, don’t actually want to put ourselves out there to experience.
So how do we strike the balance? Because as the credits rolled on some of the films I watched this month-I have to admit I let out a sigh of relief. While I enjoyed watching the chaos, I didn’t envy the destruction that came with it. We may not want the self harming love that is fun to watch unfold on screen, but a sterile one doesn’t seem to be the answer either. Perhaps that’s why art is our release. It gives us a safe way to explore our human nature that is drawn towards conflict and heightened emotions. But for me, I’m not satisfied with living vicariously through fiction alone. I don’t know what the exact solution is, but I know that I will be giving myself permission to live a little more messily from now on. It may not be cool to show you care anymore, but I’d rather live a life that feels alive and lived in than a carefully perfected bore.
