I don’t want to fall in love

“Love is a risk because it disrupts our balance, it becomes another thing to worry about in addition to work, family, and expenses,” explains Claudio. “I don’t want to fall in love, because I would stop growing, my social and professional experiences would end,” says Serena during the interviews that, as researchers on the subject of emotional relationships, we have been conducting for years with young Italians between the ages of 18 and 30.

The image of emotional relationships that emerges has shifted compared to a few decades ago. A stable emotional relationship is no longer seen as a factor in self-fulfillment but, on the contrary, as an obstacle to a self-fulfillment concept, which many young people perceive as the accumulation of social, professional, and sexual experiences. It is no longer seen as a protective factor; instead, a stable emotional relationship is experienced as an additional risk in lives already marked by profound insecurity about the future and one’s own value, like those of many young adults.

It is an epochal change, supported by the media, which prescribe rules for not having a relationship, for not becoming intimate with potential partners. In magazines, we read advice ranging from talking only about superficial things to not spending too much time together, just as international self-help bestsellers, primarily aimed at women, teach that we are complete beings who must fulfill ourselves before entering a relationship with someone. Otherwise, blinded by need, we enter into damaging relationships that will cause us too much suffering. 

A culture of “non-relationship”, of not exposing oneself to the other, is a culture of “emotional suppression,” where intimacy, vulnerability, and deep desire—even in emotional bonds—are censored. Young people feel forced to always measure up, to never show weakness or need, even in a relationship with a partner, which is often seen as just another space for performance. Emotional sincerity, and the risk of authentic exposure, is perceived as a dangerous communication failure, even at a systemic level. This is why relationships have become an increasingly fragile contract, which are constantly exposed to the risk of breakdown if one party does not meet the implicit expectations. “Liquid,” as the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman would say. Emotional suppression in intimate relationships represents one of the most insidious ways in which contemporary society shapes the individual.

The ideal of romantic love has gradually been replaced by a managerial conception of relationships, where authentic emotion gives way to its strategic management, after careful evaluation of whether or not it is worth investing time in someone. Someone who must “add value,” as they say. Love as a management project loses its transformative potential. People are no longer willing to let the other touch them deeply, because this would mean relinquishing control, accepting the unexpected, derailing or deviating from self-fulfillment. Emotional suppression thus becomes the price to pay for relational survival in the era of performance.

When love becomes a “too risky investment,” emotional failure is experienced as personal bankruptcy and is postponed in search of (re)assurances. Therefore, in the era of permanent connection, emotional suppression is no longer an exception but an internalized norm that governs emotional life, which defuses the explosive and unpredictable potential of love. Avoid falling in love is for many the new imperative, which is what the Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni described well in both personal and social terms of the transformative emerging state.

Who stands to benefit from this? Among the many factors at play, scholars are almost unanimous in recognizing the recent transformations of capitalism as partly responsible for, and benefiting from, the culture of emotional suppression. From the social media market, dating apps, and seduction, to the more trivial considerations that singles consume more than couples and a single worker is more adaptable than someone in a relationship or with a family, to the demands of production, such as geographical relocations or flexible hours.

In an era dominated by performance and competition, the culture of performance requires constant management of emotions. If we consider this, we can understand the cry of many young people, which might seem paradoxical given what has been said so far, who, usually toward the end of the interview, tell us, “In love, in the end, I just want someone with whom I can be myself!”

by Laura Gherardi* and Gianluca Maestri**
*Lecturer in Social philosophy, critical sociology and public opinion at the University of Parma
**Lecturer in Sociology of childhood at the University of Parma