sunshine, daisies, butter mellow

The idea of being witnessed eventually inspired me to share my thoughts on social media, where I reflected on how modern life complicates this desire. So much of our lives is performed and curated, and dating can sometimes feel transactional. We are looked at, evaluated, desired even, but being desired is not necessarily the same as being known. Paradoxically, the very conditions that make us more visible to one another seem to have diminished the space for genuine witnessing. How often does someone look beyond what we choose to show and take the time to understand what lies beneath? In a world where we are constantly seen, how often do we feel truly seen?

Perhaps one way we have tried to make sense of modern relationships is by finding language for our experiences. Through social media, we have learned to recognize terms like red flags, boundaries, attachment styles, love languages, emotional unavailability, breadcrumbing, backburning, love bombing, ghosting, and situationships. This vocabulary has helped us articulate the patterns that hurt us, the needs we struggle to communicate, and the behaviors we no longer wish to tolerate.

But I wonder if, in learning to name these experiences, we have also become more inclined to compartmentalize. We look for signs of incompatibility, anticipate potential problems, and assess whether someone is right for us while a connection is still taking shape. These instincts are not necessarily misguided; knowing what we need and recognizing harmful behavior matter. But there is a difference between recognizing a pattern and assuming we already understand the person in front of us. What happens when our efforts to protect ourselves from being hurt leave too little room for the uncertainty of getting to know someone?

I ended that post with the thought that wanting to be seen is human, but learning to remain steady without recognition is a form of maturity. I still believe that we can desire connection without allowing it to define our worth.

Yet beneath that conviction, I was still grappling with the tension between being seen and feeling unknown. Understanding that my worth could not depend on whether someone noticed me did not make my longing to be truly understood any less human.

That February, I was convinced I had love and marriage figured out. The case, as it turned out, was far from closed.

Recently, I came across a TikTok video titled Why Love Is Fucked for Gen Z by @Lindsiann, which made me revisit the subject from a different angle.

Toward the end of the discussion, the speaker raised an idea that stayed with me: the more jobs we assign to love, the more likely it is to fail us. It made me wonder just how much we expect from romantic relationships.

We want someone who understands us, makes us feel safe while challenging us to grow, shares our values, and makes life more exciting. We want someone who sees us in ways no one else has. Perhaps we want love to feel exceptional because we have grown accustomed to seeing idealized versions of it on social media. Beyond all that, we want to be certain that the person we choose is the right one.

With dating apps, the possibility of someone better is always within reach: someone more attractive, more compatible, more interesting. Even when we meet someone we like, a question lingers: What if this isn’t it? We have become so preoccupied with finding the right person that choosing someone can feel like a decision we must somehow get right the first time.

These expectations did not emerge out of nowhere. They are, in part, an inheritance of romanticism: the cultural ideal that love should transcend the ordinary, that a partner should understand us almost intuitively, and that somewhere out there is someone uniquely suited to us.

In the article Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person, referenced in the video, Alain de Botton traces this ideal to a shift in how people came to understand marriage. Historically, marriage was often shaped by practical considerations such as property, family alliances, social standing, and religion. These arrangements could make sense on paper while leaving little room for emotional fulfillment. Romanticism emerged, in part, as a reaction against this tradition, elevating personal feeling and attraction as more meaningful grounds for choosing a partner.

Yet in rejecting the limitations of reason, we may have swung too far in the opposite direction. As de Botton observes, marriage based on feeling has largely been spared the need to account for itself. We have come to trust the intensity of our instincts as evidence that we have made the right choice, sometimes treating recklessness as proof of love’s authenticity.

This leaves us with a difficult contradiction. We no longer want to marry simply because a union makes sense on paper; we want to feel that it is right. We want chemistry, emotional safety, intellectual compatibility, shared values, and that almost ineffable sense that this person is different from everyone else. But we also want these feelings to reassure us that we have chosen correctly.

In trying to escape the mistakes of marriages built on reason alone, we may have placed an equally heavy burden on feeling. We ask love not only to draw us toward another person, but also to spare us the uncertainty of choosing them. This is the part of what makes modern dating so exhausting: we are not simply looking for someone to love. We are looking for certainty that our love is well placed.

However, if we are to concern ourselves with finding the person who is right for us, shouldn’t we be equally willing to ask whether we are becoming the right person ourselves?

“We’re a society that’s obsessed with finding the right person without pausing to think ‘How do I become the right person?’”

-Alain de Botton, Modern Love Was A Lie