Romantic Projections
We live in an age of society heavily embedded with soul-mate realisations and romantic convictions, where we are sub-parts waiting for a whole. Mass-consumed pop culture, songs and movies have unwittingly constructed a multi-woven template of expectations of what relationships are supposed to be like, and in the light of which our own love lives can thereby often look grievously unsatisfying.
An ideal expectation would be that our soulmate, partner, other divine half will be a transcendent being, someone who understands her soul perfectly, a constantly thrilling intellectual and sexual presence.
The pursuit of satisfaction in itself is flawed. The constant chase or want for something better, quicker, further and more satisfactory. A desired state of contentment may just suffice to exist in imagination more than be grounded in reality.
Romantic Projections are ultimately something we all feel and succumb to. Freud has a theory of Psychological Projection, which is an unconscious attribution of feelings by one’s ideal states onto someone else. Alain de Botton notes that our current ideas of long-term love fail to acknowledge the human condition, one that is fundamentally broken.
As a result we break up with our partners, and exit relationships, to adjoin with alternate entities in a guise to feel romantically aligned; and then cursed because we have been systematically exposed to the wrong sorts of love stories versus raw, experiences in reality.
The Monotony of Romance
The monotony of romance then sets in — enter Marriage, where romance fades and humdrum routine sets in — unwashed dishes left by the sink, organisation of linen cupboards, preparation of dinner and unmotivated quiet nights in with the spouse, with the addition of offspring — a whole new set of chores — crying babies, screaming, howling children — little or no help from a spouse non-central to childrearing.
In the story of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary — key in romantic fiction — the protagonist Emma Bovary, in a clumsy search to bring her reality in line with art and initial expectation, embarks on a series of misguided affairs with louche figures, spends too much money, neglects her child and eventually commits suicide- bankrupt and in disgrace. The tolerance of the reality of marriage, is key.
The Reality of Relationships
We are at all points as deluded as the protagonist, for our art is full of omissions. For example, in so many romantic tales, the whole business of work is rarely viewed as relevant to the enduring of a relationship. Yet of course, in reality, part of the rationale of any relationship is to enable two people to function as a stable joint economic unit for the education of the next generation. This is in now way banal and fragile as the fleeting nature of feeling of two young teenagers in shrouded in an ingenue engagement and love. There are opportunities for genuine heroism here. Especially around laundry. We don’t hear much about this in art.
Romanticism & Capitalism
One of the central manuals of Romanticism — romantic love is now a leisured experience. Romanticism and Capitalism are two dominant narratives of our time, guiding the way we think and feel about the two things that usually matter most in our lives: relationships and work. However, combining romanticism and capitalism, as we are actually expected to do, can be arduous in the extreme. It is an unhappy historical clash — that was never meant to work from the start.
The impressive imaginative dreamy philosophy of romantic love in art — with its emphasis on intimacy and openness and spending happy carefree days together stroll on a beach, swimming under a waterfall, sits very badly with the requirements of working routines that fill our heads with complex demands, keeping us away from home for long stretches, rendering us insecure about our positions in a competitive environment.
Before Sunrise
In Richard Linklater’s film Before Sunrise, two young star-crossed lovers meet on a train, fall in love and spend hours talking about their feelings whilst walking on the streets of Vienna at night. The film suggests that love involves very close communication about pretty much everything. But the level of openness this assumes is wholly at odds with the realities of day to day life.
In Richard Linklater’s continuation, Before Midnight the lovers are brought into a discontented middle age, and acts as a brilliant corrective to his earlier romanticism. Although this hasn’t fundamentally changed our views on love, they do offer a welcome counterpoint to our more starry-eyed predilections.
A lifetime partnership, would require a larger intelligence and scrutiny, especially poses a far longer, more ambivalent and quietly audacious journey — not merely the start of a relationship as a romantic high point.
Offspring are missing typically — in such romantic starts/endeavours — In films such as Amelie, children are incidental, sweet symbols of mutual love, or naughty in an endearing way. In reality, they place the couple under unbearable strain and may kill the passion that made them possible. Life moves from the sublime to the quotidian. Everyone is always tired. There are toys in the living room, pieces of chicken under the table, years of rebellion and no time to talk.
Romantic projects serve to build a fantasy, and where this is broken in a realistic world, will lead to separation or divorce which will eventually become inevitable. We will need to learn to tell ourselves more accurate stories about the progress of relationships, to normalise troubles and show us an intelligent helpful path through them.
