While reading the article “We analyzed every ‘Modern Love’ column for the past 10 years. Here’s what we learned about love“, written by Emma Pierson, and published by Quartz in 2017, I realized a couple of things.

Firstly, Modern Love is almost the same as love from back in the days, just a tad different. Duh. What do I mean by that, you ask?

Well, there are only so many subtopics that deal with the topic of love. There is family, loss, dating, divorce, marriage, children, romance, sex, illness, death, friendship and mental health. Of course there are many other words we can ascribe to love, but one thing is for sure: There are only three main words that accompany almost every love story: Love, Loss and Sex. These three encompass every other word or emotion that comes with it. So, why is Modern Love different from other types of Love experienced in previous generations?

The article reveals that most columns barely talk about sex and rather use “sharing a kiss” or “making love” as a reference to intercourse. This is very bizarre, given the overbearing influence and availability of mass media, the internet and dating platforms which are being used to „lure“ people into beds; or so we thought.

So why then, according to popular belief, do most people assume that sex is such a popular topic when it comes to Modern Love? It’s simply not THAT interesting after all.

But what is interesting to us then? The more common topic in the columns that were analyzed, is the meaning and importance of loss, grief and pain. And it is present amongst most columns for a good reason.

Love, in most cases, is connected to pain and loss more so than to sex or happy emotions. Love is much more painful than it is joyful. And while most people like to romaticise about the ideal relationship they never had, think again: You‘re simply chasing the idea of a perfect relationship you NEVER HAD. What else is there to say?

Furthermore, most columns feature sad language and picture how loss and pain fits into their personal love story. The super prevalent notion of “everything (bad) happened in one day, shows how quickly and ruthlessly time moves without us realizing it, UNTIL all the bad stuff happens in one day and all at once.

This is a huge eye-opener and, in my opinion, one of the, if not the, only aspect I relate to Modern Love: Time. Most people lead a fast-paced lifestyle, go on many dates, sleep with many people (without mentioning it in their stories for some reason), have many different jobs at once, buy too many things on a regular basis, want too much too soon, without every stopping and thinking about time and how it relates to the concept of the love they so badly crave to have. How can love ever properly fit into our schedules and just bring us joy for the time being, or bless us with its simplicity and tranqulity, without competing against time?

We only start to realize the issue of love and time once we encounter loss, grief and pain, and see how quickly it moves into our lives, and feel how dominating its consequences are.

And finally, Modern Love is still just the same concept and idea as it existed years and centuries ago. The bigger issue for Modern Love is how few time we have, and how few of it we are willing to give in order to make room for timeless and endless love stories. Pain, grief and loss can happen so fast and occur in one day. True love, however, takes TIME.

Here’s the link to the full article: https://qz.com/962718/we-analyzed-every-modern-love-column-from-the-past-10-years-heres-what-we-learned-about-love/