The Up-Date
Is Romance supposed to be “Hopeless”?
Hey you,
Welcome to The Up-Date, the little corner of the internet where we talk all things modern dating. We’ll discuss everything from fresh, cultural topics and what’s making us swoon, to the dating experiences that made us lose hope in relationships forever (that is, until our next Hinge match). As you’ll soon learn, I’m a straight, single, 22-year-old woman who thinks she’s an expert on dating (yet has proven time and time again to not have a single, solitary clue). Frustrated, skeptical, and even a little bitter, I’m trudging along, hopeful that I’ll find love again one day — in the far, far future. Until then, join me as I share my brutally honest takes in this totally real, totally anonymous newsletter.
Question: When did it become ideal for romance to be hopeless? Was it Shakespeare and his can’t-live-without-you love displayed in stories like Romeo and Juliet? Was it Grease, with its too-cool protagonists and leather jackets? Was it Wuthering Heights’ dramatic tale of countryside romance? Or is it more of an innate human desire, to become so enveloped in a relationship (or today, a situationship) that it slowly consumes you whole? Is love only good when it has the potential to go up in flames? Is it only real when it survives a slow burn? Seriously, though — how far on the healthy-to-hopeless scale can we go without abandoning our own selves completely — and how much of that can we control?
Let’s face it, in 2026, we live to yearn. Within the last year, the internet has been utterly obsessed with over-the-top romantic gestures: Conrad Fisher’s teary-eyed beach confession and the resurgence of Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” were enough to push us all into our ‘chalant’ eras. It’s exciting, it’s intoxicating, it’s all-consuming — just the way a perfect love story should be. But are we ignoring the parts of these stories where the protagonists become destructive in the name of love — or what some might call infatuation?
Let’s take a closer look at some of the “greatest love stories of all time” that exude heavy, hopeless romantic vibes:
Romeo and Juliet:
● Immediately betray their family rivalry
● Get married within 24 hours of meeting each other
● Fake a whole death to run away together and leave their lives behind forever
● Kill themselves upon learning the other is deceased
Sandy and Danny:
● Danny repeatedly disregards Sandy’s physical boundaries, then sings about how he’s confused when she leaves him at the drive-in
● Sandy goes against her own instincts (and the advice of her friends) to pursue him
● Their “happy ending” is Sandy ditching her good-girl persona and dressing up in skin-tight biker chick attire to finally get approval from him and his friends.
Heathcliff and Cathy:
● Cathy cheats on her husband while pregnant with his child
● Heathcliff marries another woman to get revenge on Cathy, the woman he actually loves
● Cathy says that she is Healthcliff, claiming that they are one soul
Yeah. So, are these stories beautiful or.. plainly desperate? Should I envy this kind of love, or run far, far away from it?
Personally, the only kind of love I want is the kind that reinforces who I am as a whole person. Not as just an idea, a woman, or my partner’s significant other — as me. So yeah, hopeless romance kind of makes me queasy.
Until next time,
The hopeful romantic