Ramblings

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People seem to strongly romanticize romantic relationships. Perhaps this might strike you as a somewhat silly statement to make, but please indulge me for a bit here. Whenever two people fall in love (or even just one person falls in love with another, without reciprocation), there seems to be some kind of expectation that this person treats their love interest as both the most beautiful and most intelligent being out there. As I said, romance is romanticized, and there exists only undying, everlasting, self-evident love, or no love at all. Any amount of objectivity in this matter is typically met with criticism and often even hostile attitudes. What do I mean? Well, here is an example for you:

This picture is drawing a lot, and I mean a lot of criticism.

And don't get me wrong, a lot of the criticism is justified. It is posted by an account “Biblicalgenderroles”. The title “Shit tests women give their men” just flatout declares all women to be manipulative (probably because biblical gender roles generally see women with suspicion, it makes sense this account would post this shit), this picture is AI generated slop, and the picture presents the man as strong and powerful and in control, with how he looks and how his wife holds onto his arm with her terrified and insecure facial expression. The whole picture is just one big fail, and that's how the post on Reddit where I found the picture treats it.

…however. For this analysis, let me break down this picture into its essential parts. If we strip it of all the unnecessary and inflammatory elements and keep only exclusively what's necessary, what would this look like? Well, I think I have an idea:

From here on forward, this is what I will be analyzing. This breakdown is part of why I like text more than images in most cases. It lets you focus on what's necessary - for example, note how in my breakdown there is no mention of genders. There are no ages¹⁾, no facial expressions, no interference of any kind or anything that would give unnecessary context to this interaction. And, well, as much as I hate the original picture for its many faults, I find this breakdown to be reasonable.

The reality is that, out of the 8 Billion people on Earth, it is very unlikely that A is going to be the prettiest or most intelligent of them all. Sure, beauty (or even intelligence, for that matter) is subjective, but even if you rank people based on your personal subjective taste, it is still unlikely that A is going to be Pos. #1 out of 8 Billion people. When objectively ranked, even if ranked based on your personal preference, it is extremely unlikely that out of 8 Billion people you will find the prettiest person. You will always bump into people who you find subjectively prettier if you're honest to yourself. If A is in your 99th percentile then this will happen less frequently, but it will (basically) never not happen.

Now this might sound harsh and distasteful, but really this is the part that I think makes human love so valuable. Humans are not perfect. You will not find the perfectly beautiful and perfectly intelligent human out there. In fact, I'd argue that being together with the perfect human being might actually be boring and “imperfect” in its own right²⁾. Humans love each other despite - nay - because of their imperfections (of course there are limits to this as well, but you get the point). While beauty and intelligence could be considered resources that we bring to the table, it's what we make out of these resources that matter in a real and dedicated relationship. That's why we can openly and honestly admit that we don't think our partner has achieved visual perfection, because - well - our commitment to them is not based on that. In fact, what really is beauty good for anyway? What is anyone going to make out of that resource? Hah, we've basically arrived at the modern sentiment that, actually, beauty does not and should not matter³⁾.