Forum debate: Why romantic love is seen as a losing game for men

Forum debate: Why romantic love is seen as a losing game for men

There is one scene that summarizes the current state of affairs: a man who was cheated on by his first love at fifteen, who accumulated sporadic and superficial relationships, and who, when he finally found two people with whom he could have started a family, one told him she didn't want children and the other moved abroad to experience other cultures. This is how a discussion that has been open for over a year begins, evolving into a reckoning with romantic love as an economic category: who produces it, who consumes it, and who pays for it.

The starting thesis is that romanticism has died of success. It wasn't killed by rationalism, which would have left something standing, but by abundance. When necessity disappears, the brain stops seeking sarracena support and a passionate life is replaced by childish entertainment. This diagnosis is repeated in different forms throughout the conversation: positive values—education, trust, respect, loyalty, empathy, generosity—are at risk of extinction, and with them, the sentimental market that once sustained them.

Love as a luxury good and the scarcity of supply

The first adjustment concerns supply. Those who defend romanticism as something alive argue that the problem is not its disappearance, but its scarcity. Some claim to be married to one of those women who still hold their ground, admitting that they are becoming increasingly rare, making the probability of finding such a person extremely low. The conclusion is uncomfortable: romantic love functions as a luxury good, available to a few and out of reach for the majority.

The second twist is harsher. Part of the discussion holds that a romantic man is a weak man, raised in a gynocentric framework and lacking the necessary skill to understand that this approach is no longer appealing. The formula is brutal: the man who falls in love loses, and he loses before the game even begins. Others elevate it to a category: anyone who thinks about a woman for more than five consecutive minutes has an identity problem.

In response, the defense relies on biography. There is someone who has been married for twenty-six years, with two children, who champions his vvife as a good mother, a hard worker, and a partner for the next stage of life. It isn't first love, but it's close. He adds an interesting nuance: the "bad boy" type that drives some women crazy doesn't disappear with age; it simply changes function.

Why is romanticism associated with male weakness?

Because it has been culturally constructed as a renunciation. The romantic person yields, waits, idealizes, and pays. In an environment where courtship has become a transaction, this disposition is read as a competitive disadvantage. The conversation puts it bluntly: the emotional man stopped seducing centuries ago, and women from certain countries become uninhibited as soon as they cross the border, precisely because of the contrast with their home environment.

The counterargument is that romanticism is not a choice. It is temperament, not a decision, and as a temperament, it has side benefits: musical and artistic creativity, and even an uncommon playing style that unsettles the opponent, like a left-hander in tennis. The analogy is debatable, but it points to something real: being a minority isn't always a bad thing; sometimes it's just uncomfortable.

The marriage market: From family pacts to divorce as an escape

Here the discussion leaves the sentimental ground and enters the historical. For centuries, almost all marriages were arranged. Marrying for love is a modern invention, and ancestral wisdom distrusted leaving the decision in the hands of those who were going to live it. The traditional system had obvious costs—women in the hands of a man who could do with them whatever he wanted, including infidelity—and it also produced specific dramas that several generations remember firsthand.

The comparison with the present does not fare any better. Now the choice is free, but the result is viewed in terms of risk: one either chooses the one who provides emotional drama, or chooses for interest with the intention of plundering via divorce, something that was not possible before. Freedom of choice, this line argues, has not improved the average; it has only shifted the cost.

The crisis is not of love, but of everything else

The most interesting turn comes when someone connects romanticism with the economic cycle. The thesis: there is no crisis of positive values, there is expanding misery. Families delegated education to public employees who sell the mantras of the moment; trust, respect, and loyalty require at least two parties, so you are doomed if your neighbor is a problem; empathy is conspicuously absent in a psychopathic society; and generosity can only be afforded by those who have a margin, which is increasingly rare. In the twilight of capitalism, the absence of money is chaos and guaranteed mutual destruction.

That reading fits with the daily observation that several describe: behind the wheel, civility is an exception. You yield the right of way and they don't thank you, pedestrians jump into the crosswalk when there isn't a single car for miles, and using turn signals is a thing for the poor. The practical conclusion is defensive: one must drive assuming that most people will not behave, not to avoid living angry, but to avoid having an accident.

Nostalgia for analog flirting

Facing the somber diagnosis, a specific memory emerges. In the nineties, a group of boxers once joined women in an aerobics class; they would let themselves be watched to make them nervous, and they would carry pastries right where they passed by, sweaty and hungry after class. Nothing peine. At the gym dinners, they would laugh at each other's anecdotes, and some would end the night together. Healthy, innocent flirting, with a bit more serotonin. Today, that same episode would have ended in something else.

Nostalgia is not just for customs, it is for social infrastructure. Romanticism needed low-intensity spaces where things could *not* happen. Those spaces have narrowed, and with them, the possibility of love functioning as a secondary market, without the pressure of having to decide everything on the first date.

The closing is provided by a startling fact: romanticism was a movement that produced great artistic works, especially in music, and today it is the fastest way to emotional execution. The decapitated heads are counted in the thousands. There is no possible reconciliation between the two, and perhaps there never was.