Can the Pandemic Rescue Romantic Love?

Love—the mushy, I-can’t-live-without-you, you-complete-me version canonized in Hollywood movies and the Great American Songbook—is feeling rather unloved these days. For many Americans, romantic love is currently perceived as a chemically induced fantasy that has been taken much too seriously. Some of us even have a deep distrust of and antipathy towards love due to the undeniable fact that the powerful emotion can wreak havoc on one’s psyche. “A lethal combination of Hollywood sentimentality, Victorian romanticism, and bridal-magazine kitsch has placed an impossible burden on love,” wrote Judith Hertog in her “un-Valentine” published in the online edition of the New York Times on Valentine’s Day 2019, going on to explain how and why she resented “the tyranny of perfect romance.”

Many women, especially millennials (those born after 1980 and the first generation to become young adults in the 21st century), have resisted entering into serious relationships precisely because they may involve love. A good percentage of this giant generation are passing on relationships predicated on love, seeing the sacrifices and compromises that come with the territory as excessively burdensome. Many millennials do not want to take on the commitment and responsibility that calls for a long-term investment of any kind, especially one demanding some loss of control. Love is also often perceived by members of this generation as a luxury they cannot afford or simply as a foolish enterprise on which to embark.

While no doubt a risky venture, filled with uncertainty and unknowns, love embodies the very essence of life itself, I counter to those down on the emotion. There are no bigger stakes than sharing one’s life with another person and, perhaps, having a child with him or her, making love arguably the ultimate emotional experience one can have. I align with others of the pro-love school who have suggested that those who rebuff the emotion are missing out on a big part of life.

Like other highly charged sites such as religion or spirituality, love offers the possibility of adding significant meaning and purpose to one’s life, inscribing it with a layer of existence otherwise unobtainable. As well, no institutional authority governs love, making it something that demonstrates our fundamental liberties and free will. Rather than act as a threat to individual autonomy, love at its best actually augments the self, bringing out dimensions of one’s personality that would instead lay dormant.

The coronavirus pandemic presents an unexpected and I believe welcome opportunity to rescue romantic love at a time when it is endangered. Much like during and immediately after two previous historically traumatic events—World War II and 9/11—there is now a window of opportunity for romantic love to flourish. In times of crisis, humans, like most other species, tend to gravitate toward each other as a natural instinct of survival.

Our present cultural climate thus seems ideal for romantic love to thrive. We’re streamlining our priorities and rethinking how to infuse our lives with more meaning and purpose. In place of the endless and ultimately unfulfilling pursuit of things, we’re placing more value on relationships with others. We’re deepening our ties with those whom we feel close to, and reconnecting with people who in the past were important to us.

The pandemic has laid a psychological foundation for other ways for romantic love to bloom. We’re getting to know other people in ways that we never did, and we have a new appreciation for the simple ability to be physically next to another human being. We’ve become more aware of the preciousness of time and with whom we want to spend it. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we’re more in touch with our emotions and are better prepared to handle both highs and lows.

While we’re all sharing this unique moment in time, let’s be open to the possibilities of romantic love that nothing else in life can offer.