In a world where relationships can feel so superficial, the search for deeper, genuine connections remains strong. Yet our yearning for affection often goes hand in hand with the idea of love shaped by the stories we watch and read. Between romantic comedies, friends or enemies-to-lovers tropes, these narratives influence how we perceive love and what we expect from a perfect love story.
Why do we romanticize waiting, missed opportunities, and the pain of love?
Most of us have watched a clichéd movie and wished for some character in our lives. The kind of love story with suffering, a whole back-and-forth process and the yearning of ‘can’t love that person’.
The thrill of wanting someone we can’t have can bring a rush of anxiety and adrenaline, in the search to feel something real in our veins. After all, what’s the fun in a relationship that is too comfortable? Maybe we’ve become so used to the chase that stability starts to feel like routine.
Yearning, in the context of love, refers to a deep longing for someone you can’t have. You love them from afar, nurturing either a genuine feeling or just a fantasy. On social media, it has been a trending genre snapping among younger people.
This concept is the main theme in the love story between Belly and Conrad from The summer I turned pretty, on Amazon Prime, an adaptation of a book series by Jenny Han.
The narrative goes beyond a love triangle involving the Fisher brothers and Isabel ‘Belly’. Growing up, Belly spent summers at the brothers’ beach house, where she developed a strong bond with both brothers. Throughout the story, she finds herself torn between them.
Conrad is the typical boy who struggles to express his feelings, partly because of the trauma of losing his mother. He longs for Belly, but at the same time pushes her away, thinking he isn’t good enough to make her happy. Their relationship is defined by lingering glances, unspoken words, subtle touches and lots of obstacles. By contrast, Jeremiah, the younger brother, offers her reciprocity and comfort.
This type of interaction full of obstacles might have an explanation. Anne Carson writes in Eros the Bittersweet about three elements of desire: the beloved, the lover, and the obstacle. Desire often burns in this third element, because we tend to yearn for something when we don’t have it , so it is established based on the absence. When using the term “Bittersweet”, Carson says that experiencing love is nice, but distance can turn it bitter. The same experience that makes you feel alive, can hurt you at the same time.
Instead of seeking a calm, stable kind of love, we crave something to make us feel alive. When we are watching this type of love story, all the narrative revolves around the obstacle, because once the characters are finally together, the story finishes. So, what happens after they are finally “happy”?
Bringing fiction into real life can influence how we approach our own relationships, leading us to create barriers where there might not need to be any. After all, nobody teaches us what to do when our relationship falls into a rut.
Still, loving someone doesn’t mean playing games to keep them in your life: it’s a choice you want that person in your life.
Not always about romance, but about being recognized
Another conflict that affects especially women is the belief that allowing ourselves to love someone means losing our independence or standing in the way of our dreams.
“I had big dreams till I tied myself to you”. These are lyrics from the song “Purple” by Olivia Rodrigo, from the album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. Similar to the process of living childhood, we’re gradually losing old habits, dreams keep changing, and we give up some hobbies and activities along the way.
These lyrics can apply to many situations, but they particularly resonate in the context of a relationship. Women are constantly expected to prove their place in society. First, they ask when you’ll get a boyfriend. Then, it’s about marriage. Once you’re married, they ask when you’re having kids. They never stop to ask what you actually want, so constantly we get tied up in situations to comfort others, whether for the good memories or because we’re afraid of letting go.
As Anne Carson suggests, we desire for what we’re missing. So, even when we want to find our own path, the desire of being recognized and beloved can linger in our hearts, even if we don’t love this person back. This feeling can be especially difficult to leave behind when we share a history with someone.
“I care more to be loved. I want to be loved.”
– Jo March, from Little Women.
It is exhausting to feel like you have to show strength all of the time. After Jo’s statement, her mother, Marmee March, responded: “That’s not the same as loving”. Love is not only about being seen, but also about seeing. But how can we validate our dreams when we constantly feel invisible.
Jo March is a complex character who always denied what society required of women at the time. She is a writer, a sister, a daughter and a woman who has big dreams. Love takes courage, more than following your dreams. It requires you to expose the parts of yourself you usually keep hidden. Perhaps that’s why being loved can feel so reassuring.
Fear of allowing oneself to be vulnerable or disappointed
The fear of rejection leads us to pretend we don’t feel anything. In Jungian psychoanalysis, Carl Jung’s concept of “shadow” relates to our fear of being vulnerable and to the parts of ourselves that we struggle to acknowledge. In other words, this shadow refers to a mask that we put on when we deny this vulnerability, by pretending that we don’t feel anything.
In his book The Relation Between the Ego and the Unconscious, Jung uses as an example someone who becomes so good at their job that they forget who they were before. Thus, it is as if a person becomes confused with their persona ‘social mask’, repressing their shadow and their true individuality into the unconscious.
Just as denying our feelings doesn’t stop us from feeling them, the same happens with our shadow. It doesn’t disappear simply because we reject it. That shadow merely buries itself in the subconscious, but it always finds a way to return.
This fear of being vulnerable with someone can come from past trauma that emerges when triggered. When that happens, those feelings you were pushing away, resurface. For instance, a child who grows up with absent parents may develop a fear of abandonment later in life.
Nowadays, it is common for our reactions to depend on what the other person does. If they take a while to reply, we might automatically take twice as long.
The British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott developed, in The Use of an Object and the Relationship through Identifications, stating that entering in a deep relation causes a certain degree of aggression. Not because you dislike them, but somehow you start to depend on this person and, as a result, you feel anxious about it. On a symbolic level, we may feel the need to test our partner to see whether our relationship can endure disagreements and conflicts.
When you experience trauma, your entire internal structure can be reshaped, even if you don’t realize it. The body can remain on alert for danger, even before anything happens. As a result, when a person enters a state of vulnerability, they feel the need to test the stability of the relationship.
But, loving someone doesn’t mean having to pass through the tests of love endured every time. Sometimes we simply have to feel something just to know we are alive.
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The article above was edited by Julia Delboni.
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