Love and Relationships Today

 Inspired by a Luben video: Watch here

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💔 Between Dogma, Rebellion, and Disconnection

There’s a strange emptiness hovering over love and relationships today. A deep void—between the strict traditional rules once dictated by religion, the rebellious burst of the sexual revolution, and the rise of modern psychology and psychiatry. Somewhere between these fractured worlds, many of us have grown up lost and emotionally illiterate, unsure of how to navigate love, intimacy, or connection.

Sex education is often absent, or stripped down to biology alone. There's rarely discussion about emotional intelligence, mutual respect, or how to build safe, meaningful relationships. As a result, we’ve inherited shame from outdated dogmas, confusion from modern expectations, and no shared framework to help us understand what love even means.

We're a generation raised without a clear "rulebook"—and it shows.

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🧃 Mixed Signals & Shaky Ground

So many people want to love and be loved deeply—but don’t know how.

Others are afraid of intimacy altogether because no one ever taught them emotional safety. The result? A culture of mixed signals, detachment, hookup fatigue, ghosting, performance instead of presence, and silent loneliness masked by curated Instagram posts.

I remember how confusing dating felt for me at first. I didn’t understand the “game.” I had no idea how to flirt or express interest without fear. Therapy helped me so much—it taught me how to communicate, how to read signals, and how to connect with people I genuinely liked. I met my partner on Tinder. What a strange, digital twist of fate. But I was lucky: I allowed myself and others the chance to connect openly and honestly. Trust was hard—but essential.

As my first therapist once told me, “Love always has a bit of risk. It feels like jumping off a building—you never really know how you’ll land.” (Of course, metaphorically!)

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🧠 What If Love Has Become… a Simulation?

After watching the Luben video, someone mentioned the name Jean Baudrillard—and I fell down a rabbit hole. His theory of Simulacra and Simulation made something click in me. Suddenly, everything started to make more sense, in a different way that it did before.

Baudrillard believed that in modern society, we’re no longer experiencing reality—but a simulation of it. Our world is filled with signs and symbols, copies without originals. He called this hyperreality—a condition where the image becomes more real than the real thing.

Think about how this relates to love:

• On dating apps, we swipe through carefully curated avatars.

• On social media, we fall in love with edited snapshots of people’s lives.

• Romantic expectations are shaped more by Netflix and Instagram than real human experience.

In this hyperreal world, love becomes a performance. Intimacy becomes a filtered selfie. Vulnerability is edited out. Even desire becomes a product we market and consume.

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💞 The Disappearance of the Other

One of Baudrillard’s most chilling ideas is that the “Other” disappears in this process. We no longer meet people as they are—we see them as reflections of ourselves, as characters in our own story, as aesthetic filters rather than full human beings.

This creates a paradox: everyone’s looking for real connection, but no one is being truly seen.

In a world that sells us love through signs and simulations, it’s no wonder people feel disconnected, misunderstood, and deeply alone—even in a crowd, even in a relationship.

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🎬 How This Shows Up in Culture

Baudrillard’s influence can be seen everywhere:

• The Matrix (literally based on his book Simulacra and Simulation)

• Black Mirror episodes about digital love, virtual identity, and emotional disconnection

• Parasocial relationships with influencers—where one-sided illusions feel intimate

• Consumer love—where we chase the fantasy of romance, not the real work of love

Other thinkers have expanded on his ideas:

• Mark Fisher (in Capitalist Realism) explored how late capitalism hijacks reality and sells it back to us.

• Slavoj Žižek argued that people know they live in simulation—but choose it anyway.

• Umberto Eco, on the other hand, believed people still have the power to interpret reality and resist being fooled.

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💡 So… What Do We Do?

Maybe what we need isn’t stricter rules—or no rules at all. Maybe we need a new kind of relational literacy:

• Emotional intelligence

• Healthy boundaries

• Self-awareness and empathy

• Trust and consent

• Freedom with structure

• Safe vulnerability

We don’t need to go back to the past, or live untethered in the present. What we crave is a redefinition of love that honors both our bodies and our souls.

One that sees people—not signs. One that listens—not just swipes. One that invites risk, depth, and presence—not just performance.

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✨ Final Thoughts

Love isn’t dead. But it is confused.

We are standing between old shame and new uncertainty. Between rules that didn’t serve us—and a freedom that overwhelms us.

But perhaps, if we dare to look beyond the simulation and into each other’s eyes—not profiles—we’ll remember how to be human again.

-With Elli-