Romance is dead. Media depictions of yearning killed it. 

Generations of young people were sold on an idealized version of romantic love, where a conventionally attractive man is in love with a conventionally attractive woman and will stop at nothing to win her. These films propagate the idea that romantic love is all-consuming. 

Take the seminal academia classic “Dead Poets Society” (1989). As a subplot to the main thrust of the film — carpe diem, seizing the day — a young man, Knox, pines after his crush, Chris, and relentlessly pursues her despite her protest and non-single relationship status. It consumes his waking being. When he eventually woos her with poetry as opposed to stalking, she relents. 

This is seen as a win for romance in the movie. He loves her, that’s all that matters. 

“Bridgerton” repackages and repopularizes this yearning, with each season containing at least one declaration that romantic love is all-consuming. The latest season’s venture states this explicitly, with Benedict Bridgerton telling Sophie Baek that she “consumes” him. 

Due to decades of problematic depictions, yearning and the actions that follow have been romanticized and stripped of their frankly creepy realities. Romantic films paint persistence as a virtue. If a man is simply determined enough to see through his crush’s repudiations, they can be together. Once she sees the “real him,” then she will fall to his feet. A “No” is just an uninformed “Yes.”

To male romantic leads, as the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then, try again. 

This idea is strange because we don’t accept this behavior from any other kind of relationship. If you’re in a sexual relationship with someone and they reject your sexual advances, and you continue, there’s a word for that. If you’re at a restaurant and the person you’re with doesn’t want the meal you order for them, and you force it down their throat, there’s a word for that, too. 

Having romantic intentions is often enough to ignore the more problematic angles of these depictions. Since we are often put in the perspective of the male romantic partner, we are invested in his success. Women are the object of affection, not much more. Above all, every man deserves to be with the woman he wants. If he doesn’t get her, he deserves pity. 

Since everyone has experience with unrequited love, we tend to let empathy override legitimate realities and feelings. We want the protagonist to “get the girl,” so we excuse his behavior. 

It would be one thing if these ideas were only contained within romance movies, but persistence bleeds into real-world dating.

Anecdotally, we have all heard stories from our grandfathers who pestered our grandmothers for dates until she eventually relented, or from friends who have been pestered by someone they had previously rejected. 

More concretely, there is a growing number of so-called “dating coaches” online who advise young men on how best to acquire a date, often citing that persistence is key. One particular coach went viral for his advice of “not accepting her rejection.” 

It should be evident why this is a problem. Andrew Tate and other “manfluencers” like him have been peddling this assaultive strategy for years. They operate under the assumption that women do not actually know what they want and that men do. 

This is not to say potential romantic partners can never change their minds or that when someone says no to a date, they mean not now or even yes. But these are exceptions, not expectations. When people say no, they mean no. 

If romance means overriding the boundaries of a potential partner, maybe we should reconsider what romance is. If you are reliant on another person for completion, that’s not love. If you yearn endlessly without self-reflection, that’s not love. A lot of these depictions of yearning are not love, they depict infatuation. Romantic love is wonderful, but it is only one kind of love.  

Allowing people to be either romantically involved or lonely is a false dichotomy. The solution is not isolation, it’s self-fulfillment. It’s friendship. It’s platonic companionship. 

Companionship does not require constant declarations of love to unwitting people. Companionship does not require one person to pay the bill after fancy meals. Companionship requires seeing each other as human beings and not objects to win. 

To quote the great feminist classic “Barbie” (2023), “It’s not Barbie and Ken. It’s Barbie and it’s Ken.” Romance is not the end all be all, companionship is. Don’t yearn, learn.