(October 3, 2016 at 8:55 pm)Jesster Wrote:(October 3, 2016 at 8:48 pm)InquiringMind Wrote: This is really what I'm asking here. If everyone knows that this narrative is garbage, why do people continue to perpetuate it?
Honestly, I don't think everyone does know that it is garbage. It's a vicious cycle of supply and demand. Sources like Disney and romance fiction make the product because it sells and people buy it because the authors keep telling them that it's missing from their lives. The less experienced you are in the world, the more you believe it all. While I enjoy a good romance story, I'm just glad that I realize it's not real and it never will be. It's like porn. Watch it, but don't expect it to show up in your bedroom. I guess some people don't understand that.
My hypothesis in my original post was that the idealization of romantic love is part of an immortality project, or the "romantic solution" to the problem of mortality. I don't think it's something that a person just grows out of. Some people get married 3 or 4 times or more, and after each divorce, they begin anew the search for "the one," having told themselves that the person they just divorced must not have been "the one."
And I don't think it's all commercial, either. I think this narrative is perpetuated friend-to-friend ("Don't worry, you'll find someone who will love you the way you deserve to be loved and who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated") without any money changin hands.
