Love in the ruins: the paradox of modern romance

The first thing that struck Pector-Lallemand in the course of his fieldwork was the pervasive disillusionment with dating apps. He often heard the same refrain, frequently expressed in commercial similes: “Dating apps are like fast food, like a supermarket; I hate them—it’s all about appearance. Things used to be different.” 

Some participants self-diagnosed their neuroses: “I’ve developed a fear of commitment, rejection phobia, an anxious attachment style.”

The prevailing pessimism echoes French-Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz’s argument about the decline of romantic love in books such as Why Love Hurts (2012) and The End of Love (2019).

Pector-Lallemand disagrees. “The statistics show that the proportion of people in relationships in Canada was roughly the same in 2021 as it was in 1921, and divorce rates have been declining steadily since the late 1980s,” he observed. “The numbers are often ignored because they don’t fit the gloomy narrative about our tawdry age and its unkindness to love.” 

The unexpected miracle

As he burrowed beneath those generalizations, Pector-Lallemand noticed a paradox. When he asked his pessimistic participants to tell their own stories, the tone changed dramatically and their scepticism gave way to fairy-tale-like accounts, and each had a consistent structure. 

Pector-Lallemand identified three recurring stages in the love stories he collected: the miracle, heroism and healing.

First came the miracle. Respondents said they weren’t looking for love—or were even wary of it—when they met their soulmate. Whether it was via a dating app, through friends or by sheer chance, it happened in spite of themselves. 

“No one explicitly said it was fate, a somewhat dated term that may seem ridiculous today, but fate was always there in the subtext,” said Pector-Lallemand.

At the same time, the narratives did not hinge on chance alone. The participants progressed from passivity to become the heroes of their own stories. They related how they had to courageously overcome their fears before they were able to commit. 

One confronted their fear of non-monogamy; another spoke of their insecurity after a sudden, unexplained breakup; yet another broke free from a “toxic” family model.

“A key moment in the love story is precisely when they dare to ‘show vulnerability’ by revealing their fears, anxieties and past wounds,” said Pector-Lallemand. “The path to the first ‘I love you’ is never described as smooth and free of obstacles.”

Thus, in this second part of the narrative, love is no longer something that happened to the participants; they earned it.

Finally, in the third phase, participants described their current relationship as healing past wounds, something they had never experienced before. One participant said it had cured his “saviour complex”; another found unexpected fulfillment in an open relationship.

Pector-Lallemand argues that this three-step process is perceived as exceptional only because it’s framed against the pessimistic premise. “People contrast their ‘true love’ or ‘authentic love’ with what they see as a vapid age that embraces a distorted or degraded version of love,” he said.

This insight led him to a critical re-examination of Illouz’s theories. In his view, her grim analysis springs less from sociological evidence than from romantic discourse itself. 

He cites a survey in France in which 80 per cent of respondents said we live in an unromantic age, but 64 per cent reported that they themselves were romantic, a figure that rose to 74 per cent among young respondents.

“In love, the trend is to swim against the trend,” Pector-Lallemand concluded. 

“Criticizing romantic clichés is just as much a part of the discourse of love as the clichés themselves. It is this paradox that allows everyone to believe their own story is the exception, and to experience their own love as transcendent.”