A Harsh And Dreadful Thing

   Sit down, Kid. Let me tell you something serious for a moment. I hate being serious, as you know, but I think we have to talk about this. There’s no escaping it and it’s better that you know now, before it’s too late. 

Love has died, Kid. Love has died. 

  And we get to watch that sunset. Say goodbye to it. Blow it a kiss. 

Love is no longer about patience. 

       It’s about maximizing options.  

Love has become a commodity. 

    . . . Of course it has. 

        This is America after all.

Today’s love is not about romance, Kid

      That has died, too. 

And we are at the wake with shit food and smelly relatives. 

Love is about market logic in 2025, Kid. It really is.

. . . You don’t believe me?

The dating apps have turned love into a consumer experience, 

     More choice,

But less meaning. Less meaning, Kid!

We compare, optimize, and discard. 

     It’s the end of romance. We discard a real person as if they were just a picture on our phone . . .

It’s poison. 

      The paradox of having more choices steadily available is that, the easier that love has become to access, the harder it is to commit. 

         Love today is fast, flexible, disposable. 

It’s a landslide, Kid. 

       It’s an algorithm for suffering.

Tinder is the obvious example of this. It doesn’t match you for love. It really doesn’t, Kid. It optimizes for retention, keeping us swiping, not settling. 

. . . Anyway, Dostoevsky once wrote,

   “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing.”

Real love is uncomfortable. It demands suffering, not in a toxic sense, but in the sense of endurance. It’s a marathon you run while someone's leg is tied to your own. 

       That’s why real love is a sinking ship. As long as these companies are selling us love, we’ll drown in the convenience of it.

Today, suffering is treated as a failure of self-care.

     And we get taught to leave at the first sign of difficulty. 

“Love is not a feeling, but a struggle against selfishness.” I like that quote. Have you heard it before? Think about it for a minute . . . What’s it mean to you? 

 . . . 70% of Gen Z report ghosting someone because the relationship “required too much effort.”  

It’s true. Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it?

. . . Let me ask you, 

     If love isn’t worth suffering for, is it worth anything at all?? . . .

We fantasize about the ‘perfect partner’, no longer falling in love with real people, but instead we are falling in love with our fantasy. 

      It’s a sweet dream, Kid, one that fades into a nightmare as dawn approaches . . . When will we wake? . . . Will we ever wake?

The damn media sells us idealized love, but real people are horribly flawed, annoyingly complex and extremely frustrating.

. . . Can you really deny that? . . . You might be stuck in the dream, Kid. 

. . . When reality doesn’t match our fantasy, what do we do, Kid? . . . What do we do? . . . We discard and search again . . . 

I know it’s tough to see our shadow’s, Kid, but this is real life. 

“To love is to see and accept another’s deepest imperfections.”

. . . Their deepest imperfections, Kid. Not just the simple ones on the surface, but the whole pie is poison. 

. . . It only gets worse, Kid. Are you sure you want to hear more? . . . The truth will break you if you let it. Just don’t let it. 

 . . . Alright, Kid. I’ll tell you.

We can message anyone, anywhere, anytime, right? Then how come we’ve never felt more alone? Huh, Kid? Why do you think that is?

. . .  “We no longer desire. We only consume.” . . . This is America, kid. This is America. 

Love has never been more accessible . . . and it has never felt more distant. Love is on your phone, and it has never been more distant . . .

Do you remember when we talked about Sarte? . . . Well, he said that love is all about control, either we dominate or submit. 

. . . You disagree? Think about modern dating advice you’ve gotten. “Wait three hours to text back.” Or how about, “Be less interested than them.”

Power games, kid. It’s all power games. 

Our modern love reflects our modern culture. Of course it does, kid. How could it not?

   . . . It’s a performance, a constant negotiation on who needs who less. It’s sad, Kid. It’s terrible. It’s brutal. It’s cannibalism, Kid. 

 . . . A few studies report that people who ‘play hard to get’ have higher short-term success but lower long-term satisfaction . . . I don’t know where the damn study came from, Kid. But I reckon it’s really true. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Yeah . . .

If you ask me, I say that love should be about connection, not calculation, but that’s not what gets rewarded today . . . That’s not the world we live in. 

We can try to rage against our environment, and hope we meet someone who is also raging against this environment. I suppose we can hold out hope for that, Kid . . .

But, you know what they say about hope, don’t you? . . . They say it’s poison for the romantic. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any damn romantics left out there . . . Maybe one day you’ll find it . . . if you’re lucky. 

-CH 3/28/25