The allure of romance thrives on the chance of loss and failure. Men fantasize over a woman the more desirable she is. Women fantasize over a man the more disagreeable he is. In both cases the security of the bond is at risk of being lost to competition or unavailability. However, at the core of these fantasies are the prospect of a safe bond. The romantic, in their desperation, still pursues emotional safety even though they seem to react more to unavailability.

            What happens when the prospect of safety is removed? When you can no longer imagine a safe place in your mind for your relationship to exist? A common phrase on social media or the internetsphere is “Romance is dead”. We have a lot of young men and women who do not believe in the prospect of romance. We also have a lot of middle aged men and women who no longer believe in romance (or so it appears). When the average man and woman are dominated by the perspectives of the people who see the worst of the genders, you have to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

            The Red Pill was largely founded on the principle that men need to be so self-reliant mentally, physically and financially abundant in order to proof themselves from the cruelty of women who could strip them of everything at any point in their relationship. “Sprinkle-Sprinkle” was founded by a woman who promoted and independence and selfishness in women in order to proof themselves from the possible violence and the physical exploitation of women by men. Both frames set up average women and men to see the worst in each other. This debate took over the relationship conversation slowly replacing the rom-coms of the 90’s and 2000s. In fact, both sides often took the chance to dig at all the rom-coms of the past either exposing the men for being simps or cucks or exposing the women for being unworthy of the romantic lead story.

This all seemed to be for entertainment purposes at first but when economic and labor statistics are raising the alarm about the declining birth rate across the western economies of western Europe and North America we have to start facing the reality. Men and women do not get along as well as they should.

Truth be told, no one is owed a mate. There does need to be some form of courtship wherein you assess whether you are dealing with someone who is capable of responding positively to your presence and vice versa for an extended period of time even when you are not at your best temperament. However, most people prefer to compete in a game they believe they have a shot at winning. Most people prefer to compete in a field where the rules of the game protect the integrity of the player. A soccer/football player would not play in a match where the goal post can be moved at any point in the game. A basketball player would not play in a game where the height of the rim of the rim itself can fall apart unexpectedly.

What the red pill and the “sprinkle-sprinkle” have done for average men and women is convince them that the rules of the game can change on you mid-game and you are better off not playing or if you do plan on your basketball game to be held on a soccer pitch and your soccer game to be held on a baseball diamond so when the goal post moves or a ball comes out of left field, you know it is just part of the game.

In reality, this is not as true as alleged for every romantic encounter but when you have the majority of women and men approaching each other expecting the worst, how much union can be derived amidst such suspicion? Now children are still being born but the number of out-of-wedlock children is rising as well. Sadly a lot of them are what you would call love children either. We have children from one night stands, lack of hormonal control and sperm donors. The children may have the privilege of saying their even though parents were not legally together, they at least loved each other. When we see footage of men and women having screaming matches in front of a child in a car seat because their relationship was not able to last long enough for the kid to get into the kindergarten, we have to wonder what perspective would occupy this child’s mind as they grow up and one day have to deal with a romantic partnership? How do you envision romance positively if you are brought up in environment that says you do not need proper safety in financial, emotional and intellectual measures in order to procreate? And that after procreating pursuing these is pointless?

We have gotten so used to a certain level of dysfunction in the rapport between men and women that we have made room for the worst elements to thrive. In the month of January alone, we saw two things happen in the state of Minnesota that on the surface seemed to be about difference in politics that expressed a gender rift that seemed to me an indicator of an imminent end. When Renee Nicole Good was shot in broad day           light the culprit officer said live into his mic “F…in B**ch!” He and a group of men stealthily intimidated a woman who looked them in the eye saying “I don’t have a problem with you, dude.” A few weeks later, a veterans nurse by the name of Alex Pretti was executed for trying to prevent immigration officers from ambushing a woman who was defenseless and they sought to drag her through the snow. In both instances, we saw a recklessness to the point of the loss of life because there are men now who no longer have the social integrity to recognize the difference in force between men and women even when they have weapons.

The murders of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti brought to mind a sort of wartime morality wherein women are often casualties of the aggression of the invaders. In wartime, this is considered as par for the course but in more stable circumstances this would be viewed as quite injurious to the social fabric. I noticed that at no point in the commentary by the senior officials from the head of DHS to the Vice President of the United States, was it implied that we may be approaching a low point in our social consciousness. With social trust between the genders already so fraught, I fear we are plunging down a path that will seal the hope of romance in a society that once sold the formula.

By Julian Michael Yong