Love in times of crisis: "We fall in love more easily, but we're more easily disappointed"

Love, said the expert, is a source of ontological security; it brings value to relationships and a sense to life itself, and in times of crisis, when the feelings of risk and insecurity are heightened, the door to love is wide open. Nevertheless, love and happiness are not always good bedmates: it often leads to disappointment.
 

Love in the 21st century

Francesc Núñez frames the problem in terms of the imagination, the social imaginaries projected in novels and films. "In the case of love, there is a clear power in the cultural industries when it comes to setting our 'models', awakening our 'desires' and projecting us towards the future. Madame Bovary is a prototype of the influence of the modern novel (on love) in the lives of everyday people and the dangers of the imagination in terms of love and life."

Professor Núñez explains how Hollywood films are fundamentally, and magnificently, the inventor of love, of contemporary love stories. They have in, good part, shaped the way we fall in love, the type of people we would like to be (as lovers) and who we would like to fall in love with. Indeed, he went on, we want our reality to reflect this fiction, a good example being the success of E.L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

He believes that following the unbounded success of the novel, the film will also be a great success. "As is the case with this novel, many hyped productions call on all the stereotypes, everything included in the modern imaginary about what love should be, the stories that we all somehow want to live, repeated in one of their many variations…." He also warns, "however, obviously, when the imagination (social imaginaries, social imperatives and prejudices) dictate or drive the search for love, then disappointment is a likely outcome. There is normally a gaping hole between the reality and the fiction, which we have overcome through 'imagination'. The same high standards that lead to our 'search' for love, also set us up for disappointment, failure and the impossibility of a satisfactory conclusion."

Núñez talked about how, in the contemporary world, imagination is a key element in understanding the way in which we organize experience and thought. In other words, on occasions in our lives, we give more importance to what we imagine than to what we experience, as we convert our desire into the guiding light, rather than that which we have learned by experience. "Imagination is even more important when it comes to anticipating the future and, obviously, how we want our future 'love' to be."
 

Hollywood doesn't help love

Anthropologist, gender expert and UOC lecturer Begonya Enguix is no more optimistic. "The distance between fiction and reality based on imaginaries and imagination widens further if we bring the role of gender into play: men's and women's expectations when it comes to love don't seem to be aligned at all, despite the well-heralded rise of equality."

Thus, led on by Hollywood fiction, Enguix explains, women look for the ideal man who has all the virtues, among which three stereotypes stand out – protective, secure (life and economic) and strong – alongside three traits that used to be deemed feminine – caring, tender and romantic. Men look for women who are both strong and submissive, a blend of the traditional and the modern that is somewhat scarce. The difference between the expectations and experiences of love in men and women is a source of great disappointment.
 

Imagination, falling in love and neuroscience

In contemporary imaginaries, which are deeply marked by novels and, above all, films and other audiovisual productions, continued Núñez, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction. The aspirations we have for our love life are more to do with nostalgia for something we don't have, but which we've seen reflected on the silver screen, something which has thus become an eternal desire. "Thanks to neuroscience (and this is something that has been worked on a lot in the world of advertising), we know that, in terms of emotions, imagination is able to substitute actual experience. Imaginations (which are very closely related to feelings) provoke feelings, feelings that are real, as authentic as those produced by an object in the real world. This is an ability of the modern individual, the consumer, a kind of fantasy or daydream that feels as 'emotive', as real, as any other situation," he said.

In the case of love and more so in the case of "falling in love", it is very hard to distinguish between reality and fiction. "We invent, recreate, imagine, desire, hope for… the object of our love," said Núñez, and, when united with the current crisis and springtime, that means that those who are unsatisfied, those who are searching, those who don't feel comfortable or don't feel happy with their lot are more likely to fall in love. And when there's more daylight, there's more hormonal imbalance. What are the consequences? It is even easier to fall in love. "Love promises a better future, it is a 'revolution for two' and can offer stability in the midst of a 'crisis', even if this is simply a 'mirage'." But this expert does not recommend running away or abstaining from love, just calmly being aware of the situation as, in the words of the poet Miquel Martí i Pol, "cerco l'amor, ai companys!, per 'xò m'empeny l'esperança [I'm looking for love, my friends!, that's why I'm pushed on by hope]".