I don't know quite how this pertains, but here's what it made me think of: I think, at the root of our obsession with romantic love is a very human craving for ecstatic experience and the feeling of dissolution and divine unity that can come from it. Particularly in the West, and especially in mainline Protestantism and Puritanism, there is no space for that craving. It is sinful, base, feral. But, like the Catholic Church, who've historically co-opted Indigenous religion the world over, you can't completely stomp out people's desire for it so you have to create a "proper" container for it. You can let people have it, but only within this box and in this way because even within the box that direct experience of communion is threatening to power structures. You can't have queerness or kink or polyamory or women's desire and autonomy and choice operating freely in that box because then it might be too intoxicating and leak outside the box and we can't have that, can we? Also, you have to put women in charge of minding the box (or obsessing about it, as the case may be) to distract them from functioning inside it in a way that is expansive because then, again, that dreaded, threatening leaking of some sense of real, deep, maybe even Divine connection between everybody might happen.
There's nothing that undermines hierarchical power structures and systems of human value faster than a visceral sense that everything and everyone is connected.
For what it's worth, I also think our cultural tendency toward alcoholism and drug addiction is also based, in part, on the lack of any culturally provided or acceptable space for our drive for ecstatic experience. Recent assertions that the "cure" for addiction is human connection support the point. We're desperate for connection in an individualistic culture that is invested in our isolation from each other, so we reach for that feeling of dissolution of the separate sense of self in any way we can get it.
Of all our messy emotions, love might be the messiest and the most impossible to contain.
Trying to create an equilateral triangle from love = wedding = marriage is absurd when they are anything but equal.
In truth, having a wedding is more akin to "having a party" and has nothing to do with the commitment to being in a marriage day after day.
And yet, oh, the tug of the narrative story ~ I wrote about my experience of being lured back into the trap during a recent trip to Las Vegas with my boyfriend…surrounded by brides.
“It’s a narrative act” I’m dead. This makes me want to ask everyone “how’s your act going?” But then I’d also have to ask myself that and (even though I AM a Taurus) all I can see is a bull in a china shop with that intro! Lol.
But seriously wouldn’t it be great if one of these shows actually approached the production with this in mind? I picture it as creative writing class in college. Everyone writes and shares their current romantic ideals as if they are works of fiction. You get questioned and critiqued, it’s embarrassing and vulnerable, everyone heals. Maybe a therapist comes in as a guest speaker! Oh wait, maybe I’m just describing group therapy!? Dates are made after you get a good look at each other’s inner worlds and everyone agrees that ok, we are just making this all up. I’d watch that show🤣
I feel like these shows try to do this but then of course they just recycle the same old cliches every season, so no one is *actually* digging in! Makes me think of Love is Blind, which is interesting because they all decide to get engaged after having like 5 deep conversations. Or Married at First Sight, they have matchmakers and therapists, a whole team! But they still mostly just recycle the same 10 phrases. Which makes me think about how many of us get trapped in these narrow love languages— this is why I will die on the hill that these shows say SO much about our cultural moment even though many people dismiss them as trivial women's TV.
Don’t dismiss these shows as trivial Women shows, but I do dismiss them as trivial, for sure, painfully superficial. You are right, it does reflect our cultural commitment to these scripts, absolutely. These shows double down on the cliche. “How much more ( money) can we squeeze from this stone!?” What’s scary is when we see ourselves playing out these scripts, when we know we are smarter than them. Heterosexual narratives just need to expand , and it’s just a really hard thing to take on by yourself especially when kids, money and careers are involved. Woof!!! WHO is keeping up the act, indeed!! Men and women!! I think about Ewen Mc Gregory’s line in Trainspotting , something along the lines of “Heterosexuality is just our default setting” 🤪.
I will say the show “Couple’s Therapy” does a really good job of digging deeper, without always confronting/ calling out the gendered narratives within the hetero couples. They are absolutely there, but you really see the individuals behind them and just the act of them listening and seeing each other as does something to move past gendered assumptions.
I haven’t watched Bachelorette this week, but I have watched it consistently since the year I met my husband in 2011, when I was 23 years old. My friend invited me over to watch it every week and I always associate the finale on August 1, 2011 with the night my husband and I became an official couple. For anyone unfamiliar with the specific seasons, Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum were the final couple that year, and I was sad when they announced their separation in fall 2020. I will forever associate The Bachelorette with my relationship. But the language of the show is SO interesting. The arbitrary milestones they create don’t seem to follow my experience of love.
My husband took a while to say I love you, specifically 6 months. At the time it really bothered me because I had felt I was in love with him for months. 13 years later as we approach 10 years of marriage, I appreciate he was trying to decide what he thought about marriage as a whole, and what it would be like to live our lives together before he “went down that path.”
In Bachelorette world it’s weird because they have a matter of weeks to skip through all these steps and they have no real sense of what it would be like to live their lives away from being filmed and from jealousy that there’s someone else who she may feel equally strong feelings for! I’ve noticed they try to distinguish between falling in love and in love to make the timeline seem more reasonable, so they’re usually not saying in love until either hometowns or the fantasy suite date.
In general so much of my relationship seems controlled by the story I tell myself about my partner because whatever he does can reinforce that story or alter the plot in some way. I love this series, it’s very thought provoking!
I don't know quite how this pertains, but here's what it made me think of: I think, at the root of our obsession with romantic love is a very human craving for ecstatic experience and the feeling of dissolution and divine unity that can come from it. Particularly in the West, and especially in mainline Protestantism and Puritanism, there is no space for that craving. It is sinful, base, feral. But, like the Catholic Church, who've historically co-opted Indigenous religion the world over, you can't completely stomp out people's desire for it so you have to create a "proper" container for it. You can let people have it, but only within this box and in this way because even within the box that direct experience of communion is threatening to power structures. You can't have queerness or kink or polyamory or women's desire and autonomy and choice operating freely in that box because then it might be too intoxicating and leak outside the box and we can't have that, can we? Also, you have to put women in charge of minding the box (or obsessing about it, as the case may be) to distract them from functioning inside it in a way that is expansive because then, again, that dreaded, threatening leaking of some sense of real, deep, maybe even Divine connection between everybody might happen.
There's nothing that undermines hierarchical power structures and systems of human value faster than a visceral sense that everything and everyone is connected.
For what it's worth, I also think our cultural tendency toward alcoholism and drug addiction is also based, in part, on the lack of any culturally provided or acceptable space for our drive for ecstatic experience. Recent assertions that the "cure" for addiction is human connection support the point. We're desperate for connection in an individualistic culture that is invested in our isolation from each other, so we reach for that feeling of dissolution of the separate sense of self in any way we can get it.
As they say in the romance plots, yes yes a thousand times yes!
Of all our messy emotions, love might be the messiest and the most impossible to contain.
Trying to create an equilateral triangle from love = wedding = marriage is absurd when they are anything but equal.
In truth, having a wedding is more akin to "having a party" and has nothing to do with the commitment to being in a marriage day after day.
And yet, oh, the tug of the narrative story ~ I wrote about my experience of being lured back into the trap during a recent trip to Las Vegas with my boyfriend…surrounded by brides.
https://narrativethreads.substack.com/p/leaving-las-vegas
Ohhh thank you for sharing this!!
If I could post a gif where I swoon and fall back dramatically on a chaise lounge, I would. 😂
Haha we need a swoon emoji
“It’s a narrative act” I’m dead. This makes me want to ask everyone “how’s your act going?” But then I’d also have to ask myself that and (even though I AM a Taurus) all I can see is a bull in a china shop with that intro! Lol.
But seriously wouldn’t it be great if one of these shows actually approached the production with this in mind? I picture it as creative writing class in college. Everyone writes and shares their current romantic ideals as if they are works of fiction. You get questioned and critiqued, it’s embarrassing and vulnerable, everyone heals. Maybe a therapist comes in as a guest speaker! Oh wait, maybe I’m just describing group therapy!? Dates are made after you get a good look at each other’s inner worlds and everyone agrees that ok, we are just making this all up. I’d watch that show🤣
Right? And also WHO is keeping up the act? 🧐
I feel like these shows try to do this but then of course they just recycle the same old cliches every season, so no one is *actually* digging in! Makes me think of Love is Blind, which is interesting because they all decide to get engaged after having like 5 deep conversations. Or Married at First Sight, they have matchmakers and therapists, a whole team! But they still mostly just recycle the same 10 phrases. Which makes me think about how many of us get trapped in these narrow love languages— this is why I will die on the hill that these shows say SO much about our cultural moment even though many people dismiss them as trivial women's TV.
Ok, yea. That’s a fair hill to die on. I
Don’t dismiss these shows as trivial Women shows, but I do dismiss them as trivial, for sure, painfully superficial. You are right, it does reflect our cultural commitment to these scripts, absolutely. These shows double down on the cliche. “How much more ( money) can we squeeze from this stone!?” What’s scary is when we see ourselves playing out these scripts, when we know we are smarter than them. Heterosexual narratives just need to expand , and it’s just a really hard thing to take on by yourself especially when kids, money and careers are involved. Woof!!! WHO is keeping up the act, indeed!! Men and women!! I think about Ewen Mc Gregory’s line in Trainspotting , something along the lines of “Heterosexuality is just our default setting” 🤪.
I will say the show “Couple’s Therapy” does a really good job of digging deeper, without always confronting/ calling out the gendered narratives within the hetero couples. They are absolutely there, but you really see the individuals behind them and just the act of them listening and seeing each other as does something to move past gendered assumptions.
I don't think I fell in love as much as I had a good story to tell.
I haven’t watched Bachelorette this week, but I have watched it consistently since the year I met my husband in 2011, when I was 23 years old. My friend invited me over to watch it every week and I always associate the finale on August 1, 2011 with the night my husband and I became an official couple. For anyone unfamiliar with the specific seasons, Ashley Hebert and J.P. Rosenbaum were the final couple that year, and I was sad when they announced their separation in fall 2020. I will forever associate The Bachelorette with my relationship. But the language of the show is SO interesting. The arbitrary milestones they create don’t seem to follow my experience of love.
My husband took a while to say I love you, specifically 6 months. At the time it really bothered me because I had felt I was in love with him for months. 13 years later as we approach 10 years of marriage, I appreciate he was trying to decide what he thought about marriage as a whole, and what it would be like to live our lives together before he “went down that path.”
In Bachelorette world it’s weird because they have a matter of weeks to skip through all these steps and they have no real sense of what it would be like to live their lives away from being filmed and from jealousy that there’s someone else who she may feel equally strong feelings for! I’ve noticed they try to distinguish between falling in love and in love to make the timeline seem more reasonable, so they’re usually not saying in love until either hometowns or the fantasy suite date.
In general so much of my relationship seems controlled by the story I tell myself about my partner because whatever he does can reinforce that story or alter the plot in some way. I love this series, it’s very thought provoking!
So true that our relationships become defined by the narratives we have other people!