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By Anna Rahmanan
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Not to make this about myself, but a little bit about myself: I'm a hopeful romantic, by which I mean that I'm perfectly aware that love, for all its va-va-voom, has its limitations. Marriage is an actual contract, after all, and both parties have to pull their weight. But I also believe that the love Hollywood keeps feeding us is achievable, albeit in a considerably less glamorous form.
You meet someone, you like them, you see the potential. Then you work at love and, every so often, hopefully more often than not, you're rewarded with that wonderful inundation of affection that makes the whole enterprise worthwhile.
I don't spend my days contemplating romance, but recently I've found myself thinking about it in relation to my children, who are still too young to spell the word properly.
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It's an odd feeling, wishing movie-like love for your children while knowing how little control anyone has over whether it happens. I'm writing this as my husband entertains our oldest daughter by wearing a blanket as a costume, and I'm reminded that watching him with our children is one of the many things that makes me fall in love with him all over again. Naturally, I find myself hoping that one day she'll have someone willing to make a similar fool of himself for her.
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Of course, I had my fair share of dreadful dating experiences before marrying. And I have enough single friends and relatives giving the search for love everything they've got to know that dating in 2026 sounds like the most miserable undertaking of the modern age.
The numbers suggest something interesting about how Americans are responding to it all.
According to Match and the Kinsey Institute's 2026 Singles in America study, 34 percent of singles prioritize peace and emotional safety over passion and excitement, compared with just 14 percent who favor the latter. Among women, the divide is 40 percent to 9 percent.
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I understand the preference: emotional safety is enormously important and I would be horrified if my children grew up believing that romantic excitement justified being treated badly.
But perhaps because I'm in the business of words, I've become increasingly interested in the language we use to discuss love.
We talk about red flags and emotional investment. Dating apps encourage us to filter prospective partners according to predetermined criteria. We assess compatibility before we've even established chemistry. Somewhere along the way, romance has acquired the vocabulary of economics, with all its calculations of risk and return.
There's considerable merit to this approach. Anyone who has wasted years on the wrong person knows that romantic recklessness can be expensive, emotionally speaking. And the emphasis on boundaries and emotional safety reflects a reasonable desire for relationships that don't leave people feeling constantly miserable.
Still, I wonder whether our obsession with making sensible romantic decisions has crowded out something essential about falling in love: its glorious irrationality.
The same Singles in America survey found that 46 percent of singles with an ideal partner checklist had fallen for someone who didn't meet their criteria. Although I did not partake in said survey, I shall include myself in that 46 percent.
It all makes me wonder how much romantic possibility we eliminate when we insist on knowing, in advance, whether someone is a sound investment.
Let's be clear: I don't want my children to mistake infatuation for compatibility. I hope they eventually approach marriage with the seriousness it deserves, understanding that love requires oh-so much effort long after the initial excitement has faded. I need them to know that love, in all of its forms, especially when officialized by a marriage contract, is very hard.
But I also hope they get to experience that initial excitement in all its unreasonable glory. That they meet someone who makes them temporarily forget their carefully considered criteria, who surprises them, who inspires a little foolishness, who floods them with joy.
Perhaps the sensible decisions can come afterward.
For now, I'd quite like them to fall madly in love.
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