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In Chinese mythology, Yue Lao is the God of marriage and love, but you may know him as the God of the red string of fate. Yes, that red string of fate.
We, as people, are enthralled by love—by the idea of love, by the idea of being in love, by the idea of one great, true love. We have spent eons and generations performing plays, penning sonnets, and belting out songs about it. But is there really such a thing as one great, true love?
Consider your own love life, and if not your own, then that of your favourite characters. Can you wholeheartedly say that the one great love diminishes the others? That this one great love outweighs your platonic relationships? Can you dismiss every love you have ever felt and claim that they meant nothing, even though, in those moments, they were real?
Love Lies in Delusions
I remember sitting in the cinema, watching Tangled for the first time at the tender age of eight. Little did I know that, to the wistful notes of I See the Light, the chemistry of my brain was being irreversibly altered.
I would venture to say that, as much as I would like to, we cannot blame modern writers alone for our ideals. However, we can blame all writers. From heart-wrenching tales to squeal-worthy confessions, they have ruined us. They convinced us, in the simplest words and most haunting tales, that love is all around us.
Whether through whispered confessions, stolen glances, heated arguments, dances in the rain, or steadfast friendships that blossom into something more, they have shown us that love can bloom anywhere. And yet, nothing quite compares to the words they penned. What they did was something both cruel and beautiful—they made us fall in love with the very idea of love.
Men Written by Women
Many times, when I read my books, I find myself thinking that no real man would ever behave like this. And that, precisely, is the charm of men written by women. From Mr Darcy to Laurie, there is something undeniably warm about them.
They say the words women dream of hearing. They understand emotions that women spend years trying to articulate. They are, quite frankly, perfect—flawed only in the way that a diamond is cut, each imperfection making them shine even brighter. They glow and gleam because they are a reflection of what women desire.
Realistically speaking, though, that level of understanding is not always possible in the real world. More often than not, your love interest will not know exactly what to say, because we are not fictional characters, and there is no omniscient narrator guiding the story in the direction of our wildest dreams.
Love Is Everywhere
In a novel, where does love reside? The correct answer is EVERYWHERE.
Time and again, novels have proven that love exists in every corner of the world—that you are merely a short trip to the convenience store away from a life-altering romance.
From parks and restaurants to magical kingdoms and eerie towns, love can bloom anywhere.
From long flights to missed messages, stories continue to show how love will find a way. And I am not saying it won’t—I’m just saying that, sometimes, reality catches up with our daydreams.
The Perfect Storm
It always begins in the most perfect of disasters. The love interests meet in what can only be described as the start of an epic tale. And then, the story unfolds—full of perfect disasters and perfect storms, with threads that weave together seamlessly as the narrative reaches its climax. Because sometimes, getting caught in the rain simply means that you are caught in the rain. And a random blind date is just that—a blind date. We cannot keep searching for soulmates in every stranger’s eyes.
After all, as the saying goes, love finds you when you are least looking for it.
We've Fallen For An Idealised Version Of Love
Now, not all the blame can be placed on authors. We, too, have played a significant role in this mess of our own creation. Not only have we idealised love—we have idealised our idea of love. We have romanticised it in a way that cannot always align with the rosy vision in our minds. We have fallen in love with love itself, and therein lies our fault.
We created an idealised version of love and became fixated on it. Consciously or subconsciously, we search for this love everywhere and reject anything that fails to meet the impossibly high standards crafted in our heads.
But love is not perfect, and it does not require you to be perfect. Love takes time, effort, and energy—things we are not always equipped to give. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. There are countless renditions of their tragic love, and yes, you can argue that they were foolish children who weren’t truly in love. But at the end of the day, what they felt in those fleeting moments was love—at least, for what they understood it to be.
If I were to offer any comfort or extract any pearl of wisdom from all these love stories, it would be this: for all those writers to have penned such glorious and magical love stories, they must have seen, at the very least, a mere glimmer of love themselves. Even the briefest glimpse was enough to immortalise an emotion that we have spent generations chasing and attempting to define.