love is embarrassing?

Some people aren’t remotely interested in dating, which makes perfect sense. I am interested, though, and I think it’s strange that others who’re (ostensibly) also looking for a partner sometimes seem eager to maintain a level of plausible deniability about their search for romance. I’d armchair hypothesise that embarrassment at coming across as desperate or over-earnest contributes to this, with people ending up poorer in their relationships as a result.

Songs

Looking at the lyrics of songs supplied by the music industry probably gives a decent idea of the emotional flavours that listeners are demanding pithy expressions of, and it’s a fun place to start in any case. There are plenty of songs about the heady thrill of an early relationship, and the angst of unrequited love, and the loneliness or empowerment of a breakup. It seems like there are far fewer about wanting to be in love, however.¹

That’s not to say there are none – I can think of a couple: To Love a Boy, Being Alive, When He Sees Me. But at least when crudely measured by cognitive availability, music in this category is markedly rarer than the other types of love songs.

Commitment

Something I noticed organising a speed dating event earlier in the year was that people were reluctant to suggest that they be attending with the aim of meeting someone to date:

I’d come along for the laughs

People were wary of even being associated with the event!

can you follow me back on oxheart otherwise its a bit embarrassing if ppl think im being unironic 😭💀

At the very start of a blind date I went on recently, my date said that she’d signed up in order to have a good story to tell, and perhaps to meet someone new to be friends with. Of course, she might’ve decided in the first couple of minutes that she had no romantic interest in me and this was her way of politely saying so, but I still think the interaction is indicative of people being unwilling to admit that they’re looking for a partner and really want one.

Let’s take a slight detour to think about another puzzle. Why was I considering paying £100s to see Taylor Swift live on tour when I could’ve just watched a recording of the whole set from home, or (as I in fact have) gone along to Swiftogeddon? And what’s the appeal of fancy balls when you could equally well wear formal clothes and drink alcohol with friends someplace else? Yes, there’s more of a spectacle, and yes, you can say that you were actually there, but that’s not the whole answer. Events like these also have a great atmosphere, which is both a cause and a consequence of their priciness.

When I’ve bought expensive, hard-to-come-by tickets for something, I’ll think to myself « This is a special event! I had better make an extra big effort to enjoy it. » All the other attendees do the same, and since my enjoyment of an event is a function of everybody else’s enthusiasm, we’re all happy. I won’t feel embarrassed jumping out of my seat to sing along, or silly for spending lots of time choosing a nice outfit.

Since there aren’t that many people who’ll commit to dance regardless of whether anyone else does, using costly tickets to make sure that everyone buys in is a socially very useful thing.

Unless you know lots of other people who’re actively searching for a partner, you probably don’t want to single yourself out as being, well, single and searching. This characteristic then becomes a form of social dark matter.

Even if you’re on an app or at a speed dating event, if there are low barriers to being there, you might well be unwilling to accurately state your desire to be in a relationship. I suspect one reason high-end, bespoke matchmaking services have success is precisely because they’re expensive: being signed up to one signals a certain seriousness about your search.

Earnestness

I was chatting to a friend about this post the other day, and she was adamant that “wanting a partner is deeply unromantic”. Is it cringe to have crushes? Or is making an effort to find a relationship the specific thing to be avoided?

(I suspect the same friend might tell me that it’s also deeply unromantic to write blogposts pondering such things. Oh well.)

Kate Fox describes how Englishpeople value the “importance of not being earnest”. According to her, “seriousness is acceptable, [whilst] solemnity is prohibited”, but I don’t think it’s particularly obvious that romantic aspirations are on the impermissibly sombre side of the line.

An alternative explanation is that people have a perception that any truly desirable partner has far more important things going on in their life than the search for love.

Taylor Swift captures the attitude well in New Romantics:

We are too busy dancing
To get knocked off our feet

Sounding enthusiastic about dating implies that you really don’t want to be single, which might indicate that you’re easily bored, or overly needy, and therefore would make for a bad partner. What we have is a problem of adverse selection: the fact that someone is eager to find a partner and nonetheless is still single provides some evidence that other people don’t want to date them (for whatever reason), and you should steer clear too.

In other words, relationships can be something of a “self-effacing” goal – the more you strive towards one, the further away it gets. For now, I’ll keep holding out for someone who’s seriously romantic. And if that fails, I guess I’ll just have to figure out how to be less unironic 😭💀