the recent idea of love has too many double standards.

it all has narrowed down to just an aesthetic

I recently watched a reel on Instagram that made me realise about how nowadays Greek gods as boyfriends and picture perfect girlfriends have become a trend and how this bleeds into actual tangible connection. Dates don’t have to be thought-out and raw, but instead aesthetic enough to post and rant about it. Which, in my opinion defeats the whole point of dating and building human connection.

Everyone wants real relationships and love, but nobody actually wants to make a run for it. They’d just rather post the picture of a happy one and play pretend. Because obviously, they mistake the virtual reality scene. And while the uncountable theories of love like “if he wanted to he would”, and the “bouquet theory” all consume our brain, all we are left with is confusion. Utter confusion. Because at the end of the day, these theories only cancel out each other.

Now feeding us these so called “ideas of love” have taken dozens of years. It is absolutely not a ‘now’ thing. Little by little, reel by reel, the rich of the Instagram keep convincing us that if he doesn’t pay on the first date, he is not manly enough. (leave him) or, if u take her out swimming on the first date you’d actually know her beauty’s real or not. If a man doesn’t give you a hundred roses on valentines, he is not your man and obviously the internet’s favourite “if he wanted to he would”. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in believing certain ideas or following these people. But they try to preach the world that every relationship is the same, and dating is a test one needs to pass to be able to make a genuine connection. They measure every person on the same parameters. But guess what? Humans are complex creatures. Love does not follow when one follows certain standards or flawlessly meets benchmarks. It happens slowly. Actually, very slowly. It doesn’t show up magically when you’re busy searching up solutions for humans.

A lot of the times, Hollywood/Bollywood also come in the picture. Movies have to cast people with sharp features, glass skin, and overdone figures. They try to sell us the idea of hurried airport chases and grand, cinematic declaration of love, lavish surprises that mean little off-screen if you think about it. And young people grow up consuming this glamour as if it were a blueprint. They wait for their prince charming, someone who will sweep them of their feet. They mistake performance for partnership. They forget that in real life, we are all works in progress, not polished protagonists. And when they see the reality, it deeply hurts how unglamorous, repetitive and inconvenient love actually is.

Somewhere along the way, love has become a checklist. We don’t want love anymore- we want it to pass an aesthetic audit. Now our generation, ‘Gen-Z’ carries a carefully curated vision of what they want their future partner to be- emotionally intelligent, ambitious, kind, secure are some of the virtues. Yet, there’s a checkbox that’s quite unspoken, but undeniably it is there- they must look the part. Now even if a person ticks of all boxes, dressing sense and facecard often outweigh character. Now don’t get me wrong-physical attraction is natural, and very very important. But when we treat it as a prerequisite rather than an addition, we reduce love to branding. People are not amazon parcels. They don’t arrive flawlessly packaged and curated. They’re real, and messy and layered. And oftentimes than not, exactly looking their best. But that is humanity, not a flaw. Now through the means of redirecting our perception on love more as a feeling and not an aesthetic, I am not trying to convince you to never think about looks, but rather not reduce it to branding. U want emotional intelligence, but if it doesn’t photograph well, you are ought to leave them. Now if that isn’t a double standard I don’t know what is.

Perhaps, I believe the problem is not that we expect too much from love, but we’ve been taught to expect the wrong things through different forms of media. But guess what? Rewiring is always possible, even if it means to question what we’ve always been taught. Let’s all try to not to confuse surface-level impressions and performative romance with depth. Let’s not measure love by how loudly it performs, but rather by how consistently it shows up.

Because at the end of the day, love is not built in a moment meant to be admired, it is slowly built in moments meant to be lived.¹

1. helloo guys, I wanted to write on modern love for as long as I can imagine.This being my first article (ever), I've tried my best to articulate my feelings as analyticaly as possible and not lose the gist of the argument. Enjoy!

also feel free to comment and we can chat about it>333