It’s acceptable for people to say they don’t believe in a God or religion, but how often do you hear people say they don’t believe in love, especially romantic love. Just like religion, love is intangible however it’s hard to come by someone that says they don’t believe in love. At every stage in life, romantic love seems to be of utmost importance, we can all remember when we were 5 in kindergarten and having a crush on somebody.
As in we grow in age, we also seem to dedicate a lot more time, energy and sometimes money to get love.
Dr. Tiara Sukhan, Western’s Media Information and Technoculture professor says, “romantic love is romanticized through media and popular culture”.
“Especially for women, we are socialized from when we are quite young to already start thinking about our adult reality, and for a lot of them was to think about their husbands, children which for a long time did not include your own goal”.
Even though today, this reality has changed for women; women can choose not to get married as well but love still seems to be power and desire a community and intimacy because in a way “that’s how we value ourself”, says Dr. Sukhan.
“We look for love not so much because we want to love someone but because we want someone to love us”.
In today’s date, if you’re trying to date, its highly likely that you swipe right on tinder and bumble. Although these apps are popular in the hookup culture, speed was a real thing about a decade ago.
If we track back to a few years before that, matchmaking agencies were popular, but they hardly exist now, so it was surprising to find a matchmaking agency right here in London. Misty River is a matchmaking agency in London and across Ontario for the past 25 years.
Linda Miller, the CEO of Misty River, says the problem with today’s dating age is that people are constantly put in artificial and curated environments where they seem to lack an authentic dating experience like Bachelor in Paradise for example.
Even with online dating apps, the only thing that is of guarantee is instant gratification, but people are better and worse than their pictures and they have so much to offer.
“We are really about doing due diligence on people, people don’t want to meet a hundred people, they’re looking for one person who can fit it’s their criteria and are able to establish a relationship with great chemistry”, but chemistry can grow and we have to be patient.
Matching making is not new, but it has been popular on television recently. I wanted to know if people really believed in love so I went around Western’s campus to find.
A study shows that for people to get married, being in love is essential and that if they weren’t in love, they wouldn’t get married to the other person, but this thought is fairly new. Historically, people married for economic, political, practical and family reasons, very little had to do with romantic love.
Even today, there are parts of the world where people marry someone that they are not in love with. Although culturally, romantic love is viewed differently, as a community we all believe in it.
