What is Love?

To me, love is about much more than the typical love story you would see in any movie.  It is knowing someone will always support you, but more importantly, you will always support them.  It is being able to be your true self around them.  Love is when you are able to communicate without having to think about what you are saying or how you are saying it, and knowing that the other person will understand you.  My ideas of love do not directly conflict with the media’s representation, but I do feel that something lacking in the media’s representation is realism.

The media will always portray the perfect, more idealized version of a love story.  But realists know that this kind of love requires a lot of work and bumps in the road.  As the media presents love through rose-colored lenses, it also depicts it in a contrasting light.  While first we are exposed to “perfect relationships” in movies and TV shows, we are also shown the ease and pleasure of the hook-up culture.  It seems the media contradicts itself when it tries to show its viewers what love is.  Shows like the Bachelor/Bachelorette romanticize the idea of a perfect relationship, but the way the show gets to the happy ending, is essentially through multiple hook-ups.

I think the hook-up culture sometimes strays people away from the idea of love.  I am not against this culture in the sense of people wanting to both consensually just hook up; but often this culture leads to relationships where one person wants to move forward with a relationship, and the other wants to keep hooking up.  Once the “honeymoon phase” of a relationship is over, it is very easy to find new partners to perpetuate that stage.  This culture along with all of the dating websites out there have made it too simple to find something new, than to fix what you currently have.  What feeds this culture, is the increase in social media

In the past 5-10 years, social media has increased, which has obviously impacted relationships between people.  I remember in middle school and high school, the popular thing was to become “Facebook official” with your significant other.  Today, I would say that has transferred to Instagram with trending hashtags such as “mcm” (man crush Monday) and “wcw” (woman crush Wednesday).  There’s a desire to publicize your love and relationships, to make it look real to others.