The ability of man and woman to attract each other physically and emotionally, yearn for each other is a phenomenon, called love or more elegantly, romance. There are millions of stories of men and women who fell in love desiring each other; clubbed as love stories. Many of them even threw aside economic and social barriers in their pursuit of each other. Sometimes people also take to romance as a warfare strategy in an attempt to raise families and increase their own ethnic population. A lot has been said and written as to what drives man and woman to seek one another. Romantic love in man has dominated as a core theme in books, movies, and memorabilia. Historical and mythical love stories have inspired many more along the path of romance.
Emotional and sexual desires are perhaps major aspects of romantic love that fueled a large part of romance in man. It is also therefore very likely that romance in man was never an aspect of prehistoric man and could probably have evolved after we became more civilized with evolution of definite beliefs and practices that gradually increased the regulation of sex. At whatever point of time did romantic love evolve in man, it is today rapidly declining with clear indications that this subtle desire in mankind would soon disappear. The ability of man and woman to seek each other that even defined a major part of human history across several parts of the globe is sadly leaving man forever. After all love in mankind is itself falling by leaps and bounds each day. We are less concerned today to the woes and cries all around us, than ever before in our history. With fundamental love itself losing its foothold in man, how does romantic love prevail? Romantic love is today battered on all sides and is at the doors of extinction.
Romantic love is closely associated with marriages and with the institution of marriage itself receiving unprecedented setbacks, romance in man has taken a heavy toll. Marriages were a union solemnized between a man and woman. Today, in many societies with the civil unions, marriage has been redefined as a union between two individuals. With increased recognition of the rights of the LGBT populations, hetero sexual society and all its values came in for an onslaught. People began to speculate on newer opportunities of partnering, having got an alternative to the traditional complementary gender by being able to select the gender of his or her partner. The LGBT populations that are identified by their sexual orientation and sexual identity have dented the sheen of heterosexual love with its palate of alternatives. Apart from LGBT, romantic love in man has been a victim of several other factors.
Contemporary sociology of man has had its own impact on romantic love in man. With life and living itself being an uphill task and the family life no longer enticing anyone, men and women increasingly chose to remain single. Being single is celebrated today. The portal psychology today.com suggests that single life can be tremendously meaningful and fulfilling and lists over a dozen benefits of single life. In an era of runaway dads and single parenting, being single perhaps makes sense too. However the decision to remain single, succumbing to an unexpected romance is anyone’s guess. Nonetheless the decision to remain single is reinforced with time, which means it is harder for a person to take to romantic love as time progresses. Soon at some point he or she will become immune to romantic love.
While the idea of wanting to be single thwarts romantic instincts in some, for millions around the world romantic love has already moved into the luxury zone. The hard ‘step-up’ life of today has already made the possibility of romance beyond scope for most sections around the world. The ‘step-up’ life is the rise in difficulty or the demands on people and societies to deliver more sequentially each day, each year, each decade, and each generation than what it was prior to it, just to maintain that same standard of living. Romance is associated with the mind too; a mind where all thoughts focuses on the desired partner and a longing for him or her. Given the varied stress and needs burdening many sections across the globe, romantic love could be the last thing that the mind could work on.
The current ongoing trade war between the US and China point to the fact that at the end of the day, economy is what matters, not the sociology. Romantic love continues to defy social barriers like race, culture, age etc. But ironically when it comes to economic barriers, romantic love is hugely unlikely to prevail. Perhaps economic considerations are the only criteria for class formation and class consciousness in which wealth is ultimate. Fairy tale romantic stories of yesteryears when economic differences didn’t stop people from reaching out to each other are all history now. We could perhaps safely conclude that wealth is today a part of an individual’s personal appeal and only few aristocrats or royals are capable of isolating this wealth from an individual’s worth. Romantic love across economic barriers is today the flagship leading the exit of romance in mankind.
In this information age, when words like ‘personal information’, ‘identity theft’, and ‘digital security’ echo everywhere, we interact with strangers and unfamiliar acquaintances with caution. Romance begins primarily with trust and people today have to take great caution in determining whom they will trust. They need to weigh the risks that lie ahead in case of a later break up. The mechanisms that trigger excitement and blush in man have been largely replaced by mechanisms that trigger apprehension and suspicion. The information age contributed more to killing of romantic love rather than contributing to it.
It is indeed sad that a complex phenomenon among man and woman nurturing an immense desire for each other is fading away into oblivion, never to be witnessed again. There are already claims that romances of today lack depth and are more directed at consummation of the relationship and far from any romantic attraction that could stand the test of time. There is no doubt that as we evolve, we adapt and acquire new skills and habits as we also let some go away. Unlike our skills and habits, the ability to romance a complementary partner could perhaps be an art internalized or an instinct groomed in man. Romantic love had always given man a hand to hold on, a shoulder to cry on. The skies shall remain forever a testimony to the romantic love that was once exhibited by man on the face of the Earth, something that our history shall also recall later. The youth reading that history would definitely be bewildered at a man and woman simply holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes; wondering why they were doing that.
