How Romanticism Ruined Love

The set of ideas we can call Romanticism is responsible for making our relationships extremely difficult. We shouldn’t give up on love; we should just recognise that it’s a skill, not an emotion.

MORE SCHOOL OF LIFE

Watch more films on RELATIONSHIPS:

CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with Zedem Media

[KateeAngel]

The most harmful idea is that belief that everyone has one person destined for them, and all you need in life is to find that one person, and after that everything will be ideal: marriage will automatically be happy, children will automatically be brilliant etc. And that you should give up all your goals and plans if that is the only way to be with that one person.

[keatonsmith]

I remember I was really into a girl in high school, and my best friend told me "Don't fall in love with falling in love."

[sarawawa]

Communication, commitment, and sharing the same values. That's what my parents have told me is important. People change as they grow, and there will be periods of time in a marriage when you may grow apart and times when you grow back together - no matter how much you click or are meant to be together. My parents also emphasize the temporality of feelings. You can't expect happiness and infatuation forever just because you married someone, that's just not how emotions work. Feelings come and go. You could have the best life and still have moments of unhappiness, or a difficult one with moments of happiness. Feelings are just feelings after all. Above all my parents have stressed to me that love is a choice. I'm going to repeat that because I think this is so important.
Love is a choice.
A successful marriage comes from two people waking up every day and choosing to love the other person. Some days that's easier to do than others, but it's such a freeing thought. A marriage that relies on a foundation of feelings (which are so fickle) would be incredibly unstable. Feelings are probably the worst material for a foundation of a relationship. And I think that's where people mess up, they end things when the feelings go away, not realizing that they'll go away with the next person too eventually, and also not realizing that the feelings will come back eventually as well.

[kimayajadhav]

Especially the fact that we've romanticised the idea of wanting someone and loving them more than ourselves.

[gezak]

Romanticism ruined love by burying us under a set of clichés and scripts that make situations that should be personal feel like the shooting of a budget tv show featuring bad actors

[spectralv]

Romanticism can breed idealism and inflated expectations which leads to disappointment when your reality doesn't match your rose colored ideal. It's great to have standards but keep one foot in reality and in the acceptance of imperfection.

[akeelamaryam]

“And they lived happily ever after”- Disney

[ryritchey]

For me, I think that people have a lack of courage anymore when it comes to love. They are obsessed with the idea of a "perfect person" or just being friends until you are ready (which truly, you will never be). People are afraid of committing, and procrastinate finding a partner in our time. Instead we need to remember no one is perfect and you will never really feel ready. Love in the end is a leap of faith and a lot of work.

[CharlesTheClumsy]

It didn't ruin love, it ruined our view on love.
I like your way of saying that love is so much more than just an emotion.

[DaGamingLife]

This video may have just saved my marriage by not getting one

[FrankZen]

Funny... this is my biggest complaint about relationships and dating... I call it "TV love"... I stopped believing in the romantic view of love in my 30s and even then was too late... It's high school mentality...

[LOZKVIEW]

I believe no one can describe love better than the person who experienced it. That idealistic love is what it really was. Love can be everything. It's just that, as you grow old, your perception of it changes because you learn more of reality and you become more reasonable. Love that's too emotionally-dependent can be comforting but temporary, and it prevents seeing the realistic aspects of it. Love that is too practical can be realistic but obligatory and unsatisfying, neglecting the emotional aspects of it. I think the love that is balanced continually grows and lasts.

[liamaspinall]

I swear, my ex was obsessed with full on romanticism, and was always reading love stories. I'm sure i was being judged way too harshly haha.

[tusenbensen]

Just a question- why haven't you (this narrator) narrated all audiobooks in the world, or at least the school of Life ones? You have such a huggable voice :)

[liam]

Honestly for me romanticism is more about falling back on love with life

[dontaylor]

This is why I think Romeo&Juliet is the perfect romantic lovestory: Romeo's 15, Juliet's 13 and everything about their story is the total opposite of a mature relationship.

[madelyntoday]

Hollywood Romanticism killed love not the concept itself. Not only did romantic movies create unrealistic expectations, but shows that depict men as idiots and women as sexual manipulators also have made love a lot harder. Probably because people go into their first relationships with these huge expectations, get hurt a few times, and then decide that all men or women are just like how they are portrayed on sitcoms.

[justinburton]

Romanticism as a mid-eighteenth century ideology and movement was not exclusively about love, but about inserting the dramatic and emotional style into different forms of art reminiscent of the roman epics, hence, ROMANticism. The term "Romantic" referring to love exclusively only came into use in the twentieth century. The ideas expressed in this video still holds, but the movement itself was about much more than defining the expectations of love.

[nicolenicole]

As an aromantic person coming to terms with my identity was a constant struggle due to constantly being bombarded with content centered around romantic love: ads, movies, books etc
It always sounded fake and forced to me.

[joelfry]

This is a description of a stereotype, not genuine Romanticism. For instance, genuine Romanticism values self-sacrifice. This wasn't even mentioned.