If September were a person, I imagine her to be a bit like Emily Weiss in The Hills. The super-intern. Impeccably dressed, always on time or five minutes early, armed with a fresh notepad and pens, seeing both a problem and solution in all but 0.009 seconds. Sleek hair and surplus energy, superbly organised and wildly ambitious. To some? Your basic nightmare. To others? The kind of person we can only aspire to be.
September has a superiority complex. It’s all go, go, go. Out with the old, in with the new. Clean slate. And for better, or for worse, this 'back-to-school' mentality appears to be spilling into the romantic sphere.
First off, sandwiched online between Barbie movie discourse and memes about the fuckery of British weather, there were almost daily reminders that 2023 was 'the summer of celebrity breakups' (Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, Britney Spears and Sam Asghari, Jeremy Allen White and Addison Timlin, Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello etc etc). It's as though everyone's gearing up for the start of term; there's a greater sense of urgency in the air and couples are staking claim to a bold new beginning (it goes both ways: lest we forget Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner’s US Open date which could not have made their relationship status more abundantly clear).
Anyhow. Celebrity singles-or-not aside, when it comes to seeking and sustaining love, we’re living in the age of efficiency: it's all performance reviews and radical optimisation. Fun can wait and mystery sucks; strategy — a plan devised to achieve long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty — is sexy (apparently). Welcome to the HR-ification of romance.
Recent months have birthed google 'date-me-docs' (think of it as a longer dating CV and cover letter all rolled into one), attached to your dating app. These can include everything from, but not limited to, your idea of the Best Date Ever, an outline of things you’re looking for in a partner and— I’m not kidding — LinkedIn-style reviews from exes.
In TikTok-world there’s been conversations about a 'romantic probation' and over 5 million hits on the #ThreeMonthRule. It's not unlike a probationary period of employment, whereby a clear set of rules and expectations are imposed — either mutually or instigated by one person for the other to abide by. If these 'needs' are not met after three months, you simply terminate the contract. Thank you, next.
If this sounds a bit cold, that's because it is. The basic premise of vocalising what you want and what you're looking for is not a bad thing, of course. Ask any qualified therapist and they will tell you the most common reason a relationship breaks down is a collapse in communication. And yet, there’s a very real danger this aggressive-style HR-ification of our love lives is nothing more than an increased desire to self-protect from future heartbreak and humiliation. To control, to be in the driving seat. (Just google Jonah Hill’s list of ‘boundaries’). To be, finally, living in certain times!
I thought about this the other day watching Miriam Battye’s superbly acidic comedy, Strategic Love Play, at Soho Theatre (following a triumphant turn at the Edinburgh Fringe festival last month). It takes a scalpel to modern romance in the form of a bad first date. He’s boring and bored by her initially. She’s tired of the dating game and verbally desperate for them to rush to the part where they can take off their masks and just be themselves. He keeps saying ‘sorry’ the more furious she gets with her demanding questions. Skip to the part where they enter into a contract – glossing over whether they, in fact, even want to be together (minor detail) – laying out a set of into-old-age-together terms and conditions that will make them feel comfortable and secure.
Skip to the final scenes, and despite the many promises the couple make, the show ends on a bittersweet note of doubt. And this is the crux of it, the most real portrait of romance is one of unknowability. Trying to assert so much control over something uncontrollable and ever-evolving? An impossible undertaking. One that will only ever leave us in a loop of dissatisfaction, leave no room for growth or spontaneity or just the absolute inevitability of human flaws.
You can be the most ambitious person in the world. Work late nights. Go above and beyond the goals set by your boss. And you will still find something missing in that job. Because, well, that’s life. There is no such thing as a perfect job. There is no such thing as a 100% perfect relationship. People are not projects.
There’s a wonderful personal essay in The New York Times, 'In Praise Of The 10-Percent Wrong Relationship'. The author explains how the only three men she imagined a future with all told her something was missing. 'I have come to admire their audacious belief in a more perfect love,' she says. 'They deserve to find partners who are 100 percent right, whose presence fills them with joy and washes away doubt.
'But this is not the kind of love I want for myself. I believe that life feels wrong most of the time, and it is enough to find someone who will help you find humor in the wrongness, who will bear witness to your loneliness rather than relieve you of it entirely.'
If treating romance like work risks stripping it of the very thing that makes it exciting, then perhaps it's time to go back to the boardroom.
