A Brief History of Romantic Incompetence

The history of civilization is, among other things, the history of mankind’s increasingly sophisticated attempts to impress someone who may or may not be interested.

We have invented philosophy, poetry, architecture, international diplomacy, and several thousand varieties of uncomfortable clothing. We have crossed oceans, constructed magnificent monuments, and developed technologies capable of transmitting declarations of love to the opposite side of the planet in less than a second.

Yet no civilization has succeeded in answering the simplest question:

What, precisely, are we supposed to do when we fall in love?

I have devoted considerable attention to this problem and have reached a troubling conclusion.

Humanity has been attempting to write a manual for love since the beginning of recorded history.

The manual remains unfinished.

Our difficulties began in Eden.

Adam, the first gentleman, found himself confronted with a situation for which he had received absolutely no preparation.

There were no experienced friends to consult, no philosophical treatises, no instructional videos, and no opportunity to conduct a discreet investigation into the romantic customs of neighbouring tribes.

There were, in fact, no neighbouring tribes.

There was only Eve.

The circumstances were intimidating.

Imagine being expected to understand another human being without the benefit of several thousand years of accumulated misunderstandings.

Adam possessed no established techniques of courtship. He could not invite Eve to an expensive restaurant, impress her with professional achievements, or pretend to have read a fashionable book.

He did not even have a profession.

Eve, meanwhile, had been provided with equally inadequate instructions.

One suspects that the first serious disagreement arose almost immediately.

Perhaps Adam believed that a romantic evening consisted of admiring the sunset in companionable silence, while Eve wished to discuss the future of their relationship.

Perhaps Eve asked what he was thinking.

Perhaps Adam made the catastrophic mistake of answering.

We cannot know.

The surviving documentation is incomplete.

What we do know is that an apple became involved, the living arrangements deteriorated, and humanity was obliged to pursue its romantic experiments under considerably less favourable conditions.

The first chapter of the manual was never completed.

Fortunately, civilization progressed.

The ancient Greeks approached the problem with characteristic intellectual ambition.

They developed elaborate philosophical systems, investigated the nature of beauty, and produced remarkable arguments concerning virtue, desire, and the ideal life.

Unfortunately, philosophical excellence proved an unreliable preparation for domestic existence.

Consider Socrates.

According to the less charitable traditions of antiquity, his marriage to Xanthippe provided him with numerous opportunities to practise patience.

The historical accuracy of these accounts is debatable, but their popularity reveals something important about the human imagination.

We are delighted by the possibility that a man capable of interrogating the foundations of Western philosophy might still struggle to answer a perfectly ordinary question from his wife.

I imagine Socrates returning home after a particularly successful afternoon of public argument.

Xanthippe asks why he is late.

He explains that the nature of time remains philosophically unresolved.

She requests a more practical answer.

He proposes that they first establish a satisfactory definition of lateness.

At this point, the dialogue encounters certain difficulties.

One suspects that the subsequent development of Western philosophy owes something to the philosopher’s urgent need to leave the house.

The Romans adopted a more practical approach.

They constructed roads, established legal systems, conquered territories, and developed impressive techniques for administering large populations.

Yet even they failed to introduce a reliable procedure for determining whether a compliment would be welcomed.

An empire could establish control over distant provinces while an individual citizen remained incapable of establishing whether the woman across the room wished to speak to him.

History contains many such humiliations.

The second chapter of the manual remained incomplete.

The Middle Ages introduced an important innovation.

If love could not be understood, perhaps it could be organized.

Thus emerged the elaborate conventions of courtly romance.

A gentleman was expected to demonstrate devotion through poetry, tournaments, dangerous journeys, and an assortment of gestures that frequently endangered his personal safety.

The lady, meanwhile, was expected to inspire these activities while maintaining an appropriate degree of mysterious inaccessibility.

The system possessed considerable theatrical advantages.

Imagine a knight arriving beneath his beloved’s window after three months of heroic adventures.

He has defeated several opponents, survived appalling weather, and composed an ambitious poem comparing her eyes to celestial phenomena.

He kneels.

He presents a rose.

He begins to recite.

She opens the window.

“Have you washed your hands?”

The knight is devastated.

He has crossed mountains, confronted death, and defended her honour against a man whose name he has already forgotten.

Surely she understands the magnitude of his sacrifice.

She does.

She would nevertheless prefer that he wash his hands before dinner.

This fundamental disagreement between romantic achievement and domestic practicality has never been satisfactorily resolved.

The knight returns to his adventures.

The lady closes the window.

The manual acquires another unfinished chapter.

By the eighteenth century, European society had discovered that romance could be made considerably more complicated through the introduction of elaborate clothing.

At fashionable courts, the expression of affection became a sophisticated diplomatic exercise involving powdered wigs, embroidered garments, carefully composed correspondence, and the strategic deployment of fans.

A lady could communicate an entire range of emotions through the movement of a small decorative object.

A gentleman might spend three weeks attempting to determine whether a particular gesture signified encouragement, indifference, or the presence of an irritating insect.

Love letters became works of considerable literary ambition.

An ordinary declaration such as I should like to see you tomorrow could be expanded into six pages of elegant suffering.

Naturally, the recipient might respond with a single sentence.

The eighteenth century also perfected the art of making romantic disappointment appear socially distinguished.

A rejected admirer could retire to an ornamental garden, compose several melancholy verses, and emerge with his reputation considerably enhanced.

This was an important development.

For the first time, romantic failure could be converted into a cultural achievement.

The nineteenth century inherited these accomplishments and added an extensive collection of moral complications.

Courtship became a delicate operation involving family expectations, carefully supervised conversations, handwritten letters, and the interpretation of seemingly insignificant gestures.

An accidental touch of the hand might require several chapters of a novel to resolve.

A misplaced letter could destroy three engagements.

A misunderstanding concerning an invitation to tea might occupy an entire generation.

The literature was magnificent.

The administrative burden must have been intolerable.

And then, after centuries of gradual refinement, humanity entered the twentieth century.

Progress accelerated.

The telephone appeared, followed by television, commercial aviation, personal computers, and eventually the internet.

At last, we possessed the technological infrastructure necessary to solve the ancient problem.

We could communicate instantly.

We could encounter people beyond our immediate social circles.

We could study psychology, investigate compatibility, and consult an apparently limitless supply of experts.

Surely the manual would finally be completed.

Instead, we invented dating applications.

I consider this one of civilization’s more ambitious practical jokes.

After thousands of years of romantic experimentation, we have developed a system in which a person may reject a potential companion because of an insufficiently interesting photograph taken beside a mountain.

We have access to sophisticated algorithms capable of analysing preferences, interests, geographical proximity, and numerous other variables.

Nevertheless, the entire enterprise may collapse when someone writes:

Hi.

The recipient examines the message.

What does it mean?

Is the sender unimaginative? Confident? Emotionally unavailable? Perhaps the simplicity conceals exceptional intellectual depth.

Should one respond immediately?

Would that suggest excessive enthusiasm?

Should one wait twenty minutes?

Would that indicate insufficient interest?

The ancient Greeks would have been delighted.

Here, finally, was a philosophical problem capable of occupying an entire afternoon without producing any useful result.

Modern courtship has also developed an extraordinary vocabulary of expectations.

We seek independence combined with availability, spontaneity accompanied by reliability, emotional maturity without excessive seriousness, and a sense of humour that remains operational under all foreseeable conditions.

We want someone extraordinary who will nevertheless appreciate our entirely ordinary habits.

We demand authenticity while selecting photographs in which we bear only a passing resemblance to ourselves.

We insist that communication is essential, then spend considerable time attempting to communicate without revealing what we actually mean.

Our ancestors would recognize the situation immediately.

Only the costumes have changed.

I recently attempted to summarize these historical developments in a single document.

The project was provisionally entitled A Complete and Reliable Manual of Romantic Conduct.

I began with Adam.

I proceeded through the Greeks, the Romans, medieval chivalry, the great European courts, and the technological revolutions of the modern age.

I examined poetry, philosophy, etiquette, psychology, and several contemporary publications promising romantic success through techniques that appeared suspiciously similar to commercial negotiation.

The research was extensive.

The conclusions were disappointing.

Every civilization had developed its own elaborate procedures for approaching love.

None had established what to do when love actually arrived.

This struck me as an extraordinary administrative failure.

I considered abandoning the project.

Then, one summer afternoon, I found myself sitting at an outdoor café.

A woman approached wearing a light dress with small polka dots.

The wind was making a determined effort to interfere with its arrangement.

She sat opposite me.

I had prepared several interesting observations concerning the historical development of romantic conventions.

I intended to explain my theory that humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements had been accompanied by an almost uninterrupted record of emotional incompetence.

It was an excellent theory.

I had supporting examples from at least six historical periods.

She looked at me.

“Would you like some tea?”

I forgot the ancient Greeks.

I forgot the Romans, the medieval knights, the powdered wigs, and the entire technological infrastructure of contemporary romance.

For a moment, I could not remember whether I preferred tea.

“Yes,” I said.

“With biscuits?”

This presented an additional difficulty.

I had spent several weeks investigating the historical development of human courtship.

I had not anticipated biscuits.

She smiled.

I closed my notebook.

Outside, the afternoon continued its ordinary activities. A waiter argued with a delivery driver. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing jazz. The wind continued its unsuccessful negotiations with her dress.

I had intended to finish the manual that evening.

Instead, I ordered tea.

The manual remains unfinished.