Why are modern relationships so hard today? Why do we fail at love every time, despite trying so hard? Why have humans suddenly become so inept at making relationships last? Have we forgotten how to love? Or worse, forgotten what love is?
We’re not prepared. We’re not prepared for the sacrifices, for the compromises, for the unconditional love. We’re not ready to invest all that it takes to make modern relationships work. We want everything easy. We’re quitters. All it takes is a single hurdle to make us crumble to our feet. We don’t let our love grow, we let go before time.
It’s not love we’re looking for, only excitement and thrill in life. We want someone to watch movies and party with, not someone who understands us even in our deepest silences. We spend time together, we don’t make memories. We don’t want the boring life. We don’t want a partner for life, just someone who can make us feel alive right now, this very instant. When the excitement fades, we discover nobody ever prepared us for the mundane. We don’t believe in the beauty of predictability because we’re too blinded by the thrill of adventure.
“When the excitement fades, we discover nobody ever prepared us for the mundane.”
We immerse ourselves in the inconsequentials of the city life, leaving no space for love. We don’t have time to love, we don’t have the patience to deal with modern relationships. We’re busy people chasing materialistic dreams and there’s no scope to love. Relationships are nothing more than convenience.
We look for instant gratification in everything we do – the things we post online, the careers we choose, and the people we fall in love with. We want the maturity in a modern relationship that comes with time, the emotional connect that develops over years, that sense of belonging when we barely even know the other person. Apparently, nothing’s worth our time and patience – not even love.
We’d rather spend an hour each with a hundred people than spending a day with one. We believe in having ‘options’. We’re ‘social’ people. We believe more in meeting people than getting to know them. We’re greedy. We want to have everything. We get into relationships at the slightest attraction and step out, the moment we find someone better. We don’t want to bring out the best in that one person. We want them to be perfect. We date a lot of people but rarely give any of them a real chance. We’re disappointed in everyone.
“We believe more in meeting people than getting to know them.”
Technology has brought us closer, so close that it’s impossible to breathe. Our physical presence has been replaced by texts, voice messages, snapchats and video calls. We don’t feel the need to spend time together anymore. We have too much of each other already. There’s nothing left to talk about.
We’re a generation of ‘wanderers’ who wouldn’t stay at one place for too long. Everyone is commitment phobic. We believe we’re not meant for relationships. We don’t want to settle down. Even the thought of it is scary. We cannot imagine being with one person for the rest of our lives. We walk away. We despise permanence like its some social evil. We like to believe we’re ‘different’ than the rest. We like to believe we don’t conform to social norms.
We’re a generation that calls itself ‘sexually liberated’. We can tell sex apart from love, or so we think. We’re the hook-up-break-up generation. We have sex first and then decide if we want to love someone. Sex comes easy, loyalty doesn’t. Getting laid has become the new getting drunk. You do it not because you love the other person, but because you want to feel good. It’s all the temporary fulfillment we need. Sex outside relationships isn’t a taboo anymore. Relationships aren’t that simple anymore. There are open relationships, friends with benefits, causal flings, one-night stands, no strings attached – we’ve left very little exclusivity for love in our lives.
“We have sex first and then decide if we want to love someone. Sex comes easy, loyalty doesn’t.”
We’re the practical generation who runs by logic alone. We don’t know how to love madly anymore. We wouldn’t take a flight to a far-off land just to see someone we love. We’d break up because, long distance. We’re too sensible for love. Too sensible for our own good.
We’re a scared generation – scared to fall in love, scared to commit, scared to fall, scared to get hurt, scared to get our hearts broken. We don’t allow anyone in, nor do we step out and love anyone unconditionally. We lurk from behind walls we’ve created ourselves, looking for love and running away the moment we really find it. We suddenly ‘cannot handle it’. We don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to bare our soul to anyone. We’re too guarded.
We don’t even value relationships anymore. We let go of the most wonderful people for ‘the other fishes in the sea.’ We don’t consider them sacred anymore.
There’s nothing we couldn’t conquer in this world, and yet, here we are ham-fisted at the game of love – the most basic of human instincts. Evolution, they call it.
Contributed Article by: Ankush Bahuguna
Photo by: Ibal Acevedo
Let Your Heart Be Broken – Contributed Post
This is the most accurate and terrifying truth I have come to read about our world today. Ankush has detailed the exact thoughts that have been in my mind when it comes to how people are today. How most perceive love and how they go about relationships today. It seems I’m the only one who isn’t terrified of love when I can say I’m the first.
But it’s as if people forget that to stay authentic to our feelings, to just be real and to live is what makes us human. Instead most rather live with their head above water because it’s safe. But rather it’s sad. This article gave me goosebumps and then it made me tear up. Thank you for clarifying what has been going on in my head for so long and for putting it out there for everyone to acknowledge and perhaps change one day. Here’s hoping.
Hopeful romantic xoxo
But where’s is the most basic, most rudimentary supporting evidence of this opinion. Where’s the comparative analysis? Where’s even a single example of the failure? The opinion piece, even through the overbearing and droning use of “we” and “we’re”, assumes a person takes singular ownership of faults. This is no different from like that dude that does the corner anti-mygeneration poetry on youtube. Sex takes work, infatuation takes work. There’s never been a quantifiable promise that relationships last indefinitely.