There’s a video of a woman who explains why relationships fail. You ask your boyfriend to exchange morning texts, he agrees, but soon forgets. You remind him but he forgets again. And then you stop liking him, and the relationship ends.
The video went viral because people intuit that something is wrong but can’t put it in words. It’s the marketization of love that bothers them. In the video’s definition of love, it’s no longer a feeling that you experience. It’s no longer the romantic love, the overpowering emotion that changes everything. It’s no longer the love as we have understood it in our civilization since the 12th century. It’s now a transaction. You give me XYZ and I give you “love” in return.
The interesting thing is that what’s being exchanged in this transaction isn’t real. It’s a simulacrum, an empty sign. The morning texts are supposed to mean that the boyfriend cares. But they don’t really mean it because they aren’t a spontaneous expression of his feelings. If he wakes up in the morning, and you are the first thing he thinks about, and he’s filled with joy and expresses it in a text message, that’s beautiful, and it does mean something. But if he only does it as a chore, then the texts are meaningless. The woman wants to purchase something completely worthless and give something equally worthless in return.
Transactional love is an exchange of simulacra. He offers a fake sign of caring, and she gives fake love in return. Actual love is scary. You can’t squeeze it into a formula of transaction, of supply and demand. It can’t be quantified or explained with graphs and arrows like the woman does in the video.
We are so afraid of life that we hide from it among empty signs, primitive formulas, and barren equations. Transactional love is no love at all.
Clarissa's Blog 
I see stuff like that with… puzzlement. But then I brush it off because my husband and I are weirdos and it seems pretty clear that young people in serial “dating” situations just have different priorities. Why would I need him to validate me in cutesy Pinterest-relationship kind of ways? So I can score relationship-performance points with my girlfriends by showing them the texts? I mean, he supports us financially, he’s a good dad, he cooks dinner on his days off, he’s totally honest, and we are a good team, working together, every day. I always thought that was the *point* of dating: to get to raising a family together, with a hefty reserve of trust and emotional security, and an environment where our kids feel safe.
He still leaves his dirty socks on the floor sometimes… it’s pretty trivial in the big picture. I also do things that annoy him. Which he graciously ignores most of the time. Because nobody’s perfect.
People talking about “relationships” on TikTok are pursuing something else. I’m not at all sure what that something else is, but they are clearly not pursuing long-term relationship security and raising families. But… do *they* know what they’re after? Is there a long-term goal there, or is it just “he makes me feel good this week, and if he doesn’t it’s over”?
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It’s the triviality of her “ask” that’s so sad. She’s not asking for marriage, children, life-long devotion, support through a bad illness, help with elderly parents, etc. It’s all so puny and unimportant. Of course, you’ll go through people like Kleenex and end up with 1,200 Tinder partners if this is your definition of love.
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Yeah, pretty much. If that’s what floats your boat, go for it I guess. It just doesn’t seem like a strategy that ages well. Fun at 20 perhaps. What about 30? 40? 60? Not planning to live that long?
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Are they not interested in anything permanent, or is it that they don’t believe that’s possible anymore?
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“People talking about “relationships” on TikTok are pursuing something else”
Atomized rootless aimless people (the neoliberal ideal) don’t want or need ‘relationships’. They want clout and resources (to the extent that there’s a difference to them).
Getting a guy to text her every morning increases her clout. It’s a lasting sign of what she can get a guy to do for her. If he starts slacking off then her clout is reduced and like a company downsizing he’s dead wood and let go.
The drive to maximize ‘efficiency’ ends up bleeding into all human relationships. This is partly behind the ‘success’ of Only Fans… it provides (mostly) young women with resources and attention in exchange for a simulacrum of sex.
In a way prostitution is the perfect neoliberal relationship – short term and monetized with no feelings involved.
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…all of which stops working the millisecond these girls show any sign of aging.
Then what?
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“Then what?”
Years ago after dealing with a couple of sociopaths in a couple of different environments I figured out something that has saved me a lot of time and effort (I am answering the question just in a roundabout way).
For real sociopaths there is no past or future, it’s all in the now. They don’t care when you point out inconsistencies over time because that was then, this is now and trying to explain ideas like internal consistency is like trying to explain opera to a cow. All they want to do is get through the moment. The next moment might as well be a million years away and they’ll get through it when it comes.
I think it’s the same thing with OF types or the general clout strivers. They’re living in the moment and when OF or whatever dries up they’ll find something else.Whether that’s a bourgie housewife turn (assuming they can find a husband) or a life on the streets hunched over in the fetanyl zombie pose…
The neoliberal mindset is really not involved in any kind of real future. It’s about cutting ties to the present for a better imaginary future that never arrives.
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Well, we’ve been doing that for what, ten, twenty, thirty years now?
No shortage of zombies in my county. Official stats show homeless population up 50% in ’23 over ’22, and we were already one of the highest in the state.
Very unfortunate that we seem to be farming them now.
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Yes, it’s all about being able to post on social media that your boyfriend sends you daily texts. The point of having a boyfriend is to have something to post. But the people seeing the posts don’t give a crap either. They are just annoyed with their boyfriends for not giving them something Instagrammable.
It’s all so very icky. Those poor people.
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oof. This is why I quit fb. It was making me despise people I knew IRL, because their “social media presence” was so obviously an edited-for-PR version of their lives, where they outrageously violated the privacy of family and friends, whored their kids out for FB “likes”… and I felt myself pressured to keep up, respond in kind (shudders). And that was before even getting to the horrific digital privacy problems with all that, even on “friends only” accounts. It felt really grubby. These were people I had basically respected as decent people in person.
This sounds like just the immature-teenage-relationships version of the “Perfect FB Mommy” game. Dress-up for grownups. I feel like the next generation is gonna rebel by reviving square dancing for social fun. It’ll be crazy edgy.
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Perhaps the most beautiful thing you’ve ever written.
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Ha!! It’s what I’m writing in my new book! It’s going to be a good one, I promise.
Thank you for noticing the qualitative leap.
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