Romance Post Noughties

A short while ago I wrote a story on Love post Noughties asking the question, What is Love in our modern day and life. Other then the occassional view by a few readers, not too many at all, I found the obligatory follow up question. What is romance in the post-noughties?

Romance has been disintegrating since Generation X and is continuing to deplete in its traditional sense, the idea of chivalry is indeed dying, despite many men still clinging onto it as part of who they are. I believe that feminism is to blame for this shift, or even the perception of what feminism means.

For example say a man would open a door for a woman, it could be taken as the man is expressing his dominance over the woman indicating that she could not open the door on her own; whereas the man might see it as being traditionaly chivalrous.

I consider myself both a feminist and a love of Chivalrous and romantic gestures, I do not consider it an insult to be paid for on occassion, or to have a door held open for me. However the concept that I could not pay for such a meal or if I was depending on it to be paid for would be an insult to my view that women should be able to stand independently and not have to worry about money if suddenly they were without the assistance of a man, or even the man for those dependent on government funding for the basics of life.

In any case the simple acts of chivalry are being guilted out of society by the very people who they are intended to please, the women. So romance in itself is being harder to create, even with someone a person cares deeply about they find themselves worrying about political correctness. Holding a womans hand, opening a door, buying dinner all are these chivalrous acts being taken out of society and those participating are being laughed at for attempting them.

Romance, I am still a big fan of it and I hope this political correctness which seems to now be extending to our personal lives disperses soon enough.

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Love in The Post-Noughties.

Love post-noughties.

I am not sure what it means to be in love in this age. In January my mother and my now step-dad got married in the front yard of the house they built together proffessing their love to one another in front of close friends and family. For both of them it was their second marriage and they both brought family and friends together to make up the new family that was formed.

I for a year now have been in a relationship, one of great affection and passion. But  would not attribute my feelings to that of love, lust and affection together do not make this feeling of love. But still I have seen many people including my own family members declare their love for another after just a few months or weeks of seeing a person romantically. My sister, of whom I would have considered during her time living in the city as ‘social’ knowing as much as any sibling would want to know of their elder siblings endeavours on a nightclub scene. However after meeting a man of whom I introduced her to within a short time love was proffessed on his part and she soon reciprocated, this being after a panicked phonecall to our mother.

Love, perhaps has now truly formed between them but at that time when the words were uttered, did she truly believe what she said? Could she have held onto him claiming she reciprocated the love when it was not a true statement? Or can the saddness and desperation of living in a city all alone make the heart long for the affections of another ever the more prevalent. Maybe living within a world where relationships were what we seemed to seek out made the concept of love a far more difficult thing to grasp.

In this world, we are filled with a lie or illusion, a story of how love is in the fairy tales, and we are told that love doesn’t happen like this. Love is just a mixture of the chemicals int he brain drawing us closer to others, so if love is just the chemical reaction drawing us to another, then how does it define between Lust and affection.  Couples I have seen in our generations have stuck together, they say it is love, but is that truly so? Maybe its all lust, or even desperation which keeps them together, so they can survive in this competetive economic world, where there are so many people and so many possibilities that we just seem to rob ourselves of.

Do these couples together talk, do they understand one another and accept them for their differences and celebrate them? Or do they both compromise to be unhappy together? The one question I just must ask, Why are you in Love?