I hope I don't offend the "real lovers" by saying this, but I'm a bit worried we're getting fed too many opinions and too much advice about dating, relationships and romantic love.
Scrolling down my timeline on X, formerly known as Twitter, it seems like every other tweet is an anecdote, how-to, or horror story about love. And as a frequent reader of romance novels — a business that is booming by the way — I'm overwhelmed. I can't be the only one.
The fixation on love isn't new. Humans are "wired as organisms to bond to a partner, and that's why love and relationships and matters of the heart are so fundamentally important for all of us," says Lisa Marie Bobby, a marriage and family therapist and founder of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching.
It's normal and can be helpful to seek advice about how to grow as an individual and be a more supportive partner in romantic relationships, Bobby tells CNBC Make It. But when anyone can share love advice despite their credentials, "there is a high degree of variability in the quality and the trustworthiness of the advice that people receive," especially on social media platforms, she says.
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This may be causing a problem, very similar to one that French journalist Raoul de Roussy de Sales wrote about in 1938: we're too consumed by the idea of having the "perfect" relationship.
I stumbled on De Roussy De Sales' article, "Love in America," when digging through The Atlantic Archive; I'm a lover of history and enjoy finding parallels between the past and the present.
As a disclaimer, De Roussy De Sales' piece is gender-specific and attributed certain characteristics solely to women and others to men. It cannot be overstated how different cultural norms were in 1938 compared to now.
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"Women did not have full privileges as humans without being connected to a man through marriage. And so that contextual, cultural piece of it needs to be understood, because the life trajectory of an unmarried woman in that day and time was very different than that of a married woman," Bobby says.
Yet, there are some similarities in some of De Roussy De Sales' observations from 86 years ago, and what experts are seeing play out in present-day.
In his article, written in May of 1938, he detailed his concern with how much Americans were focused on the concept of a romantic love without flaws, noting that many seemed to be abandoning relationships at the sight of any real conflict.
In "Love in America," De Roussy De Sales wrote:
Thus the problem of love in America seems to be the resultant of conflicting and rather unrealistic ways of approaching it. Too many songs, too many stories, too many pictures, and too much romance on the one hand, and too much practical advice on the other.
De Roussy De Sales' worry at the time was that fairytale-like depictions of love from songs and novels paired with books on cookie-cutter ways to approach issues in relationships, could actually be harmful and leave "little room for compromise."
He noticed that fictional representations of love were causing people to believe that "love is always wholesome, genuine, uplifting, and fresh," and "when, for some reason or other, it fails to keep you uplifted, wholesome, and fresh, the only thing to do is to begin all over again with another partner."
And with the rise in books about how to maintain the perfect marriage being published at the time, De Roussy De Sales wrote, "You cannot possibly feel cheerful when you see the art of love...reduced to such automatic formulas."
It's a complicated conundrum, Bobby says, because "it is a fantastic idea to try to educate yourself about how healthy relationships work, and do some work," on yourself but "anytime any of us substitute the judgment of other people for our own judgment and experience of reality, we can run into problems."
Essentially, there is no play-by-play for love, De Roussy De Sales explained, and a hyper-fixation on it could lead to negative outcomes. And Bobby agrees.
When coming from a trusted source like an authentic relationship expert, love advice can be positive, especially "if it's connected to you and your reality and sensitive to the fact that everybody's different. Everybody's coming from a different context, living in a different context, and there's no cookie for the cutter," Bobby says.
"What does become a problem is when people are listening to these messages about what relationships should be, or what people should be doing or should not be doing, that are very black and white, that are said with a lot of confidence, from people who often aren't coming from this evidence-based approach."
Honor your desire for love, but don't assume it'll solve everything
There's also the issue of the belief that finding your romantic counterpart will solve all of your life's problems, which De Roussy De Sales recognized nearly a century ago.
He feared that an overreliance on examples of love and advice about it stemmed from individuals wishing to be "helped to solve certain difficulties" instead of accepting "the idea that maladjustments and misunderstandings are not only normal but bearable once you have made up your mind that, whatever may be the ultimate aim of our earthly existence, perfect happiness through love or any other form of expression is not part of the programme."
If you strongly desire to be partnered or start a family, Bobby encourages you to not downplay your wants or degrade yourself. She just warns that you don't assume attaining those desires will make you happier or more fulfilled.
"That is false. You are going to feel about as happy as you feel right now and as fulfilled as you feel right now, whether or not you have a partner or a house or a baby," Bobby says. "Honor and respect that they're our very real and legitimate desires, that people are, again, hard wired to have."
It's important to decide what your values are in life, whether it be family or serving your community, in addition to your desires for love, she notes. Working with a life coach can be a great support if you don't know where to start, she adds.
Ask yourself, "What is it that I desire in the future and what am I experiencing?" Bobby says. "The answer to this question is very individual in nature, and it requires a lot of self awareness and deep digging to think about."
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