Dear hopeful romantics...

let’s calm down.

I partly grew up on Filipino telenovelas like I once mentioned here. And if there’s anything distinctive about that industry, it was the concept of love teams.

It is basically when two co-stars, having served all the feels and butterflies, build such a strong fanbase, with a tandem name to match. E.g - James and Nadine (Jadine); Kim and Xian (KimXi), Daniel and Kath (Kathniel), and so forth.

Some of these people eventually got into an actual relationship. And when it didn't stand the test of time, it always made me wonder if some of those dynamics were born out of pressure more than mutual affection and a desire for commitment.

I remember when two of my favourite actors broke up. I took it personally. Wept, even. I mean, dude had once written a song about finding forever in her. We, the shippers, believed it. So when it fell apart, the confusion was everywhere. But, I guess that’s life. Circumstances. Whatever. Maybe not necessarily because anything got jinxed.

The thing about watching love unfold from the outside is that you only ever see what you’ve been shown. Or what they want you to see. You fall in love with the idea of them, and then feel betrayed when real life turns out to be more complicated than how things appear.

I think about that a lot when I see how we respond to love stories or meet-cutes unfolding online.

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Sometime in January, I came across a post on here, someone writing about a date with a person she’d met on Substack. Although I didn’t leave a comment, I was genuinely rooting for them because of how she described the experience. Too cute. It made me happy in that quiet, vicarious way. I even sent the article to my friend and we had a whole banter about it. “Ehn, people are finding love on this same substack?!” LOL!

Until recently, when another article randomly surfaced on my feed. A follow-up. Turns out I’d missed a few updates because I wasn’t subscribed to the lady’s substack. And things had not gone the way some of us had hoped and gushed about. Sadly.

For some reason, I went back to the initial post from January and read through the comments. And that was when something profound hit me. While the lady shared about one date—just one!—in the comments, people had begun talking wedding bells, owanbe & aso-ebi.

Bruh.

I know some of those comments were meant in good fun, that’s understandable. My love radar too is keen. So, I’m not talking from a kill-joy perspective.

I'll have you know I reckon as a member of the hopeful romantics association. Unapologetically. If you’ve read my works—essays, fictions, then this is no news. I love love. I know how to gush, and rile with excitement for people I barely even know just because they have a cute thing going on.

But…I’ve also been learning to calm down lol.

When people do the soft-launch or hard-launch (as the case may be), it’s okay to be genuinely excited for them. Hello, you’re normal. It’s okay to drop the quirky, heartwarming comments.

What I don’t think is okay is the subtle pressure that masquerades as “rooting” for them, especially when you know very little. And we see a lot of this. Mention one date, and someone’s already planning your wedding with a human you barely even know yourself. Write about your new relationship, and your DMs fill up with people asking for relationship advice, as if two people figuring things out together are suddenly qualified to hand out a handbook. (I read about exactly this recently, and the person being asked had to gently admit she didn’t have much to share. Because how could she? They were still figuring it out themselves.)

I think it’s because of these subtle pressures that some keep their relationship private. The pressure about timelines, projected-perfection and whatever else. And to be fair, it’s not entirely anyone’s fault. Anyone who shares something on social media should expect some attention. That’s the nature of sharing.

But when people do share, let’s resist being too in their faces about it. Yes, some of them are also too in our faces: stepping on our necks, and everything—but let’s not be like them 😂. No aura for aura. Let’s allow them figure out the next chapter without feeling like they need to conform to a script the shippers (read: audience) have already written.

After all, every good love story deserves the chance to unfold on its own terms. Even when we’re watching a romcom and can already swear two people will end up together, there are always what I like to call the “inevitable in-betweens.” The seasons they have to go through, and grow through, together. And you, the one following the story, have to let it write itself.

The same should go for the love we see blooming around us. We’re witnesses to these stories, not co-authors, whether we’re close to them or watching from afar.

Thank you for reading!

Yours in Quality Time,
Adébọ́lá. 🦋