The story goes something like this. A princess is trapped in a tower. Another crosses dangerous woods to reach her. The moment they see each other, they know. No explanation needed, no negotiation, no awkward conversation about whose turn it is to handle the kingdom's accounts. They unite their realms and live happily ever after.
We know it is a fairy tale. The trouble is how much of it we quietly still believe.
Where the idea came from
Our modern expectations of love are surprisingly recent. Romanticism, the cultural movement that swept Europe in the late eighteenth century, transformed love from a practical arrangement into an intense emotional experience, and in doing so handed us most of the assumptions we still carry.
It was not all bad. Romanticism gave love a depth, passion and meaning it had often lacked. But it also left us a set of expectations that almost no real relationship can meet.
The expectations it left behind
The perfect person exists. Somewhere out there is someone so suited to you that being together requires no effort. The search for this person makes ordinary, workable love look like settling.
You will simply know. Love at first sight, instant recognition, understanding without needing to speak. Real intimacy is built slowly through hundreds of clumsy conversations, which feels like failure if you were promised telepathy.
It should always feel intense. Romanticism presents love as an all consuming state that never fades. So when the early fever cools, as it always does, people wonder whether their relationship is dying rather than recognising that it is simply changing form.
One person should be everything. Your partner as your source of happiness, confidence, purpose and self worth. It is an enormous weight to place on one human being, and it tends to crush the very independence that made them attractive in the first place.
Real love is effortless. Perhaps the most damaging of all. If love is supposed to be easy, then difficulty means you chose wrong, and there is no reason to develop the skills that would have helped. Couples stop trying precisely when trying would have worked.
What real love looks like instead
Real love is far less photogenic. It lives in the everyday: the small kindnesses, the willingness to compromise, the decision to stay in a hard conversation rather than leave the room. It deepens rather than burns, trading fire for something steadier and considerably more durable.
None of this makes it lesser. A love that has survived being tested is more remarkable than one that was never inconvenienced.
The alternative to romanticism is not cynicism. It is a more honest romance: two imperfect people, on their off days as well as their good ones, choosing to build something together and getting better at it as they go.
Aim for that. Authenticity, resilience and growth beat chasing a story someone wrote two centuries ago.