Pip Rasmussen

So, yeah, people might have expected compatibility, but this was about destiny, right?

Like romantic love became destiny.

Exactly.

And this idea that this one person is supposed to be your everything.

Philosopher and writer and author Alain de Botton writes about this.

He actually did an article for the ABC magazine.

Really?

Yeah, like six, no, yeah, 10 years ago, 2016.

But he spoke about the romantic era and romanticism both being kind of normative but at points delusional.

So he said that in the romantic era and what we know of today, we were meant to meet a person of extraordinary inner and outer beauty and immediately feel a special attraction to them and they to us.

He also says that we should have highly satisfying sex, not only at the start, but forever.

We should never be attracted to anyone else.

We should understand one another intuitively.

We should just know what the other's thinking.

We don't need an education in love.

And that we should have no secrets and spend constant time together.

Raising a family...

should be at the cost of no sexual or emotional intensity and our lover must be our soulmate our best friend our co-partner a co-chauffeur our accountant our household manager and our spiritual guide okay in what world this is how that's crazy i think about i know but this is what are you saying is like fast forward to now this is what we think about romantic love in our western world yeah and i think obviously like that is so reflected in even as you named it before love is

Exactly.

And you think about the Disney movies that you might have watched growing up or the fairy tales as well that you were told.