The way we date has changed, but the fantasy of a ‘big love’ has not
It’s the moment of pure kismet, a chance meeting between two people fated to be together. Think Jesse and Celine in Before Sunrise, a transatlantic meeting of souls on the railroad, or Audrey Hepburn’s sleeping beauty moment in Roman Holiday.
Yes, it’s the meet-cute. And it continues to inform our ideas and expectations about relationships.
This is the subject of 10 Ways to Find Love ... and How to Keep It, a new book by Dr Lisa Portolan, an academic at the University of Technology Sydney who researches digital intimacy and dating apps.
Dr Lisa Portolan is the author of a new book, 10 Ways to Find Love … and How to Keep It.Credit: Rhett Wyman
According to Portolan, most people still want the fantasy of a “big love”, but don’t believe they can find it online. Others don’t believe they deserve this kind of love at all.
More than 337 million people worldwide use dating apps, with an Australian report from 2023 finding that nearly half of Australians engage in some form of online dating. Of those surveyed, 23 per cent in serious relationships who had dated in the past two years met their partner on an app.
However, despite their popularity, apps rarely feature in fictional love stories and, in turn, aren’t a place people secretly hope to meet their soulmate.
Storybook love
Big love, which Portolan describes as that “swept off your feet” feeling, is fed to us from a young age via romantic comedies, books and now social media.
While people may presume these ideas about romantic love are mainly held by straight women, Portolan says they were present among men she interviewed, and within heterosexual and LGBTQ couples.
British sociologist Anthony Giddens, whose work Portolan references, argues that our ideas around modern romance emerged in lockstep with the rise of the novel: think Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Today, the romance novel retains a stronghold in our cultural imagination with the growth of the “romantasy” (romance-fantasy) genre. In Australia, sales of romance novels have doubled in the past five years. These are not stories of everyday love, but of grand, earth-shaking romances.
Society’s preoccupation with love stories could also be symptomatic of a growing malaise with modern dating.
The internet is full of stories about the “hell” of dating apps, or people stuck in “situationships”, romantic relationships without the commitment or label. And modern dating can be dangerous, with a 2022 report finding three-quarters of survey respondents had experienced sexual violence facilitated by dating apps.
Portolan thinks this chasm – between the fantasy and reality of dating – has something to do with the clinical nature of dating apps, which she dubs the “UberEats of relationships”.
“It’s the concept that the grass is always greener on the other side, you consistently swipe and there will always be someone new. So that’s not necessarily congruous with the idea of ‘the one’.”
Interestingly, while most people still saw themselves meeting “the one” organically, and in person, they also didn’t believe this was really possible. Many, Portolan found, felt resigned to use dating apps, while others felt they just weren’t destined for a meet-cute.
“The meet-cute was reserved for uber-attractive, intelligent and charismatic people,” she writes.
A classic example of the “meet-cute”: Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) have a chance meeting on a train in Before Sunrise.
Waiting for life to begin
So strong is the notion of big love that Portolan found many singles she interviewed were putting big milestones – like buying a house or having children – on hold in the hope of finding it.
“There was a sense that if you hadn’t found that one person, then the rest of your life couldn’t begin. It wasn’t a life well lived if you weren’t in a relationship per se,” she says.
Portolan says this can have practical implications, particularly for women, in today’s “tough financial market”, where people who do have the resources to buy a house or have children are still waiting.
The stories we tell ourselves
It is a very human impulse to identify with the protagonists of love stories, and to map their narrative arcs onto our own, often less-than-perfect lives.
As Portolan writes in the book, these love stories and romance plots give “audiences a vicarious glimpse into the highs and lows of human connection. They affirm the universal longing for love and companionship.”
This impulse has crept into Portolan’s own life. She met her partner 20 years ago during her university days when she passed him her number on a piece of paper. The pair went on a few dates, but nothing ever came of it until two decades later when Portolan, now divorced, came across his number in an old book. She tracked him down on Facebook and the two reconnected.
“When I told a friend of mine the story of how I met my partner, I said, ‘If I met him now, without the backstory, I don’t think I would have been interested’,” Portolan writes.
Even as someone who researches love and dating for a living, Portolan says she is not immune to the draw of love stories. “I am a victim of this as well,” she says.
In her research, Portolan found those who did meet online still felt the need to weave a bigger story.
“They will still contextualise it in some way. They’ll say, ‘Well, actually, we first met in real life, and then I saw them on an app.’”
However, our propensity for storytelling isn’t always a bad thing – fantasy and imagination play a part in sustaining relationships long-term.
“There are always going to be issues. That story is the glue which keeps things together and keeps you moving forward,” she says.
Moving away from the grand romance
- Shift your focus: Portolan has watched the growth of the “boy sober” movement, which sees people decentre romantic relationships, with interest. But she wants people to realise they can find love outside of romantic relationships, whether in themselves or in friendships.
- Allow space for different kinds of love stories: “You might not see yourself represented on Instagram or on television, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that your version of love is wrong,” says Portolan.
It takes work: Romantic comedies can sell us the idea that love is something that just “happens” to us, and that a happily ever after means a relationship free from conflict. But real intimacy, Portolan says, takes vulnerability and hard work.
10 Ways to Find Love...and How to Keep It (Echo Publishing) by Dr Lisa Portolan is out February 5.
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