Against romantic love: why Religious Truth is more Honest than Western Freedom

Biology, faith, and social disintegration in the contemporary myth of love

We have been promised that romantic love would be freedom and salvation. Empirical reality suggests otherwise: fragile bonds, disintegrating families, structural loneliness. This essay interrogates that promise and proposes a theological and anthropological reading in which religious truth, though disillusioning, appears more consistent with human nature.

Human beings undergo a continuous process of renewal, both biological and symbolic, which is rarely acknowledged as such. Cells regenerate, bones renew themselves over time, identity itself shifts from day to day; yet the idea of Resurrection—understood not only in an eschatological sense but as a permanent transformation of being—is often rejected or reduced to myth. No individual is ever identical to themselves over time, and this impermanence does not constitute a loss but rather a necessary condition of existence.

Acceptance of this transience renders confrontation with finitude less traumatic. The time allotted to human beings is limited and unavoidable: it may end in an instant or after decades, but it cannot be halted. It follows that the purpose of existence should not be reduced to the mere pursuit of pleasure or well-being, but rather oriented toward understanding, learning, and the overcoming of the trials imposed by life.

From this perspective, the thought of Khalil Gibran is particularly illuminating. The invitation to follow one’s heart—even when it leads to suffering and inner stripping—suggests that love itself may constitute an initiatory trial. To love someone who will inevitably be lost—through choice, change, or destiny—teaches that human bonds are contingent, imperfect, and non-absolute. Their ultimate purpose is not mutual possession, but the reorientation of the individual toward a transcendent dimension, toward God.

The loss of love, therefore, does not represent an anomaly but a universal experience. Love, as a feeling, is by nature unstable and temporary; like all emotional states, it cannot be fixed or guaranteed. Accepting this reality early enables access to a more mature form of serenity, grounded not in affective dependence but in inner equilibrium.

It is within this state of peace that the deeper meaning of Islam becomes more intelligible, understood as conscious submission to the order of reality. The couple relationship ceases to be the foundational element of individual identity, and priorities—particularly for women after the formation of a family—undergo a substantial transformation. Needs for stability, security, cooperation, and companionship emerge, accompanied by a self-regard that renders the exclusive centrality of the man in the definition of one’s value superfluous.

From this standpoint, the romantic idea of love as total and perpetual fusion appears as a relatively recent cultural construction, amplified by the Western media imaginary. The distinction of biological roles—man oriented toward diffusion, woman toward receptivity and continuity—is often denied in the name of an abstractly conceived equality rather than a functional one. This does not imply a hierarchy of worth, but a differentiation of roles that has historically ensured the survival and stability of human societies.

The rejection of this biological and social reality has coincided with an exponential increase in familial fractures: divorce, single-parent households, economic and psychological isolation of mothers, and growing fragility among children. In parallel, the emphasis on individual self-realization and ego has progressively eroded collective support networks.

Love, understood as romantic passion, thus reveals itself as a transitory experience; what endures instead are compassion, responsibility toward others, and commitment to the community. Yet even these values today appear subordinated to a logic of affective consumption, in which betrayal and relational instability become systemic phenomena.

Questioning the model of the princess-woman and the man as the exclusive source of emotional validation does not entail denying female dignity, but rather rescuing it from an illusory paradigm. Dominant narratives have often produced the opposite effect from what they promised: an increase in loneliness, precarity, and familial disintegration.

The Qur’an, in its radical sincerity, does not soften this condition. Precisely for this reason it may be unsettling: it disillusions, unmasks, and forces confrontation with human nature as it is, not as one might wish it to be. The freedom granted to men within their roles is balanced by material and moral obligations; women, by renouncing the claim to symbolic exclusivity, may paradoxically gain access to a more concrete and autonomous form of freedom.

Accepting not being “the only one” does not equate to denying one’s worth, but rather to removing that worth from dependence on external recognition. In this sense, the provocation is not an attack on human dignity, but an invitation to reconsider the foundations upon which it is constructed.