Romantic Passion: A Modern-Day Poison

By equating emotional intensity with proof of love, our era confuses passion with a lasting relationship. Fueled by fiction and the entertainment industry, this ideal would condemn our romantic lives to perpetual dissatisfaction.

For centuries, romantic passion has fueled the greatest stories of our civilization. From Phèdre via Tristan and Isolde or even Romeo and Juliet, many legendary couples have embodied this ideal. It may be, however, that our relational ecosystem is now threatened by the dominant power of the myth of passionate love.

How did we get here? First, through the gradual dissolution of the moral institutions that guided individuals in their emotional lives. Secularization has relegated the churches to the sidelines, leaving the field open to new frames of reference. The cultural industry quickly took over, unleashing unprecedented influence as distribution channels developed and became more widely accessible: from movies to TV series, all the way to the phenomenon of dark romance. These cultural works have gradually established themselves as the primary framework for our romantic imagination.

And for good reason: nothing is more captivating to portray than romantic passion. Blending love, violence, desire, and transgression, it brings together all the ingredients of the best storylines. Yet fiction is never innocuous. It shapes our psychological outlook, offers models and expectations—especially when no competing authority exists. Few authors have described this phenomenon better than Denis de Rougemont: «The invention of a rhetoric quickly brought to the surface certain latent powers of the heart. The publication of *Werther*, for example, sparked a wave of suicides. Rousseau got the entire French court to drink milk, and *René* devastated several generations.»

We are not immune to the stories we consume, and that is the very tragedy of our romantic lives. The intensity of passion has thus become the standard by which we measure our love. The emotional roller coaster must be constant; absence must become unspeakable suffering; displays of affection must be intense, and psychological abuse must be severe. We have made passion—which is not, however, love—the be-all and end-all of a successful relationship. We thus condemn ourselves to experience one disappointment after another, viewing as flawed any relationship—which is necessarily marked by lulls and disappointments—that does not replicate this romantic intensity.

Yet this intensity is largely based on an illusion. As Stendhal explains in his theory of «crystallization,» passion feeds on our ignorance of the other person and the fantasies we project onto them. It is often the spark that allows love to blossom, but it cannot serve as a lasting substitute for it.

The irony of romantic passion is that it has never been more fantasized about than now, at a time when it has become impossible to achieve. Indeed, passion implies obstacles: marriage that prevents an adulterous union, families that have long hated one another, religious rules that make living together unthinkable… Yet in liberal societies with flexible mores, no moral barrier is clearly insurmountable anymore. The very existence of extramarital dating apps like Gleeden is a symptom of this. A world without taboos cannot provide the space for passion to unfold.

Thus, after losing our sense of love, we have lost our sense of passion. Such is the tragedy of relationships in the West: losing sight of the other person to the point of losing ourselves.

A writer and philosopher by training, Baptiste Detombe is the founder of the Republican media outlet Gavroche. Every month, he takes a critical look at the technological and sociocultural changes of the time.

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