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In this article, Fallon talks about modern Romanticism-- and how it has affected modern love.
Has Romanticism ruined modern love?
Has Romanticism ruined modern love?
By Fallon Rosebraugh
By Fallon Rosebraugh
Romanticism-- which, in part, characterized the idealization of love and feeling as an all-consuming, passionate force– has shaped how individuals have thought about relationships for centuries. Therefore, the art of romanticizing can be both negative and positive. At its core, it is about seeing the magic in the mundane, appreciating the small details, and fostering an appreciative mind. It involves consciously focusing on the positive and beautiful aspects of life, embracing the present moment, and finding beauty in the everyday– even the depressing aspects. It paints love as the ultimate ideal– as a sort of powerful connection that ignites passion beyond reason. However, in this modern world, has Romanticism damaged the way love is experienced and perceived? The art of Romanticism is a way of seeing through a sense in which the world softens and deepens profoundly. Like all powerful lenses, it can both clarify and distort.
Photo from Medium
At its heart, Romanticism is the practice of filling the ordinary with significance. It celebrates love as a transformative, almost ethereal experience– the “soulmate” or “one true love” that is fate or destiny. This ideal encourages people to seek perfection in their partners and in the relationship itself. According to Medium, “Blame the Romantics for planting the idea of the soulmate in our heads — the one perfect person destined to complete us. From the moment we start looking for love, we’re chasing this idealized version of a relationship. It’s as if the universe has already picked out our partner, and it’s just a matter of time before we find them.” When individuals believe that love should always be thrilling, poetic, and effortless, normal relationship challenges start to feel like failures rather than natural parts of intimacy. Moreover, Romanticism often places love on a pedestal so high that it eclipses other important factors, such as communication, respect, and compatibility. People often fall for the idea of being in love without truly knowing or accepting their partner's complexities and flaws. When held too tightly, Romanticism can blur vision– creating impossible ideals, turning partners into projections, and mistaking intensity for intimacy. In such moments, Romanticism no longer illuminates. It blinds. The expectation that love must always be extraordinary can render the quiet rhythms of real connection inadequate. Yet, this danger is not inherent to romanticism, but rather to its misapplication– the confusion of aesthetic with substance, of dream with reality.
Yet, to blame romanticism for disillusionment is to mistake the dream for its misuse. The fault lies not in the yearning, but in the insistence that love must resemble a narrative arc rather than a living, breathing process. According to author Taryn Tyler, “Emotion is not something that is regulated in romanticism. It is not controlled or fought against. It is embraced. Experienced. Chased. It is let loose in passionate declarations of love, perilous journeys through storms, and dark laments of despair. Emotion cannot be harnessed or manufactured by a machine in a factory. Rather it is a wild and beautiful part of the human experience that cannot and should not be tamed.” This kind of romanticism fosters an appreciative mind, one that sees beyond utility and into essence. It is not a delusion, but a discipline: to believe that there is beauty even in heartbreak, that loneliness carries its own poetry, that longing itself is a form of love.
Photo by Faculty of Arts
Ultimately, Romanticism should not be portrayed as the enemy of modern love. It paints love not merely as a relationship, but as an orientation to life itself. A force that elevates the soul, that asks not only to be felt but to be lived, shaped daily through attention, through tenderness, through choice. In this way, Romanticism becomes not a distortion, but a devotion – to beauty, to presence, and, above all, to meaning. Yearning for fairy tale love is not a crime, as long as the act of romanticizing does not blur into the act of escapism.
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