I Won't Believe That Romance Is Dead

We don't know what romance is. Our generation is fond to the idea of love, but this concept of romance is so far lost on us. We know lust, some of us even know love. We know the eagerness and yearning we have for someone we know we'll never have. We know the heartbreak and soul crushing pitfall of learning that what we love and who we love don't match up.

Dates and courtship have been replaced with hookups and 'game'. And that's just what it is to most people these days--a game. Dating used to be a concept in which two engaged in a relationship, hoping for the ultimate goal: marriage. Yet nowadays, relationships are seen as disposable. People are dispensable. The idea of a relationship is lost upon us all.

We have relationships with friends, we have relationships with superiors. We constantly engage in relationships, most of which we guard ourselves from. Name one person who knows every single one of your deepest secrets. If you can think of two (aside from your therapist and mother), you're in the vast minority. Most can't even think of one. We keep ourselves guarded so that when the relationships fail (because our generation undoubtedly feels it will), we've still got a piece of ourselves to hold onto.

We need to retain a piece of ourselves, for we fear giving it all to one person. We remember the love of our life from the 7th grade, the one that ripped up the post-it-love note we gave them on Valentines Day. We think of the fact that the divorce rate in our country is over 50%. We're taught to think that people and relationships are simply disposable. Don't put too much time nor effort into it, for you're only fooling yourselves.

What happened to believing in love the way Disney characters did? What happened to playing "house" as children and accepting two mommies, two daddies or one of each? It's crazy to me that six year olds are more interested in marriage than 26 year olds who've been dating for four years. 

Instead of chastising today's generation for our lack of emotional depth within relationships, let's set a different standard. Let's recreate a culture built off of romance. One in which both men and women hold doors open for one another. One in which women cover up and look classy and respectable for dates. One in which maybe, just maybe, we begin to believe in love once-more.