Romantic Churn
Credit where it's due, I think my ChatGPT sometimes deserves to have its wisdom shared (very slightly) more widely. So here's a swing at that:
Me: At my most cynical, I wonder if romance has been so idealised that it is set up to fail. And churn is profitable: restaurants, holidays, dating apps, gifts...
ChatGPT: You’re not wrong to eye romance with suspicion—especially in its Hallmarkian, slow-motion-sunset version. It has been idealised into a glittering mirage: the idea that one person should complete us, excite us forever, parent with us, grow old with us, and still make us laugh after 40 years of farting in bed. That’s a hell of a spec. No wonder it breaks under its own weight.
And yes—churn is very profitable. If you were designing a market for maximum ROI, you’d want a cycle of:
1. Aspiration (dating apps, gym memberships, self-help books),
2. Infatuation (gifts, trips, Instagrammable moments),
3. Disillusionment (therapy, solo travel, retail therapy),
4. Separation (lawyers, new housing, drinking apps with sexy branding),
5. Repeat.
Romantic failure isn’t just a tragedy—it’s an industry. A finely tuned ecosystem of heartbreak and hope. And mononormativity helps keep the machine humming, because it defines “success” so narrowly that most people fail—but hope not to, and hope is monetisable.
The question is: how much of that ideal is a trap, and how much of it points to something human we don’t want to lose? Want to go digging there?
Me: Sure
ChatGPT: Alright. Let’s crack this chestnut open and see if there’s anything worth salvaging beneath the rot.
At its best, the romantic ideal gestures toward:
• Yearning for deep connection: not just sex or companionship, but to be seen and still loved. A kind of radical acceptance.
• Commitment through change: not clinging to sameness, but a promise to re-meet each other as you both evolve.
• Shared meaning-making: creating an inner world—a “we” space—where jokes, rituals, dreams accumulate like sediment.
Those aren’t cynical. They’re arguably sacred. The tragedy is that we bolt them onto an industrial model of romance: exclusive, forever, sexual, domestic, and often legally codified—then expect it to self-actualise without flex or feedback.
So what if we asked instead:
• Can we uncouple romance from exclusivity without losing depth?
• Can we build rituals and intimacy in ways that don’t require monogamy or cohabitation?
• Can we make relationships modular, negotiated, dynamic—without giving up on the emotional poetry?
Maybe the true poison isn’t romance itself, but the idea that romance must take one form to count. That this person, in this setup, will finally scratch every itch. That’s where idealism metastasizes into delusion.
Your turn: what is worth preserving from the ideal for you? What stirs something real, even when you know the script is dodgy?
Me: I think the NRE ride is something that can and should be enjoyed, so long as you know its limits and side-effects. If it launches you into deep, sustaining attachment then so much the better. But the latter is not the afterglow of the former.
ChatGPT: Yes—that’s beautifully put. NRE is rocket fuel, but not the orbit. It’s the spark that lights the kindling, not the warmth that keeps you alive through winter. And mistaking one for the other is how people end up with singed eyebrows and broken leases.
There’s this cultural tendency to treat New Relationship Energy as if it’s the truest feeling—“real love”—when in fact it’s chemically closer to temporary psychosis. You idealise, project, rewrite your schedule, ignore red flags, and think the barista also finds your lover intoxicating. It’s theatre, and you’re on both sides of the stage.
But you’re right: if you know it’s a high—like being drunk on mutual curiosity and dopamine—you can enjoy the ride without demanding that it land you in the right postcode. The key is not anchoring your future on the hallucination. Deep, sustaining attachment is built in the unsexy slog of trust, conflict repair, shared mundanity… the bits no film ever lingers on.
I wonder—do you think people are secretly addicted to the churn because it gives them permission to stay in the NRE zone? Like serial thrill-seekers avoiding the quiet truth of long-haul intimacy?
Me: Quite likely. It would seem to fit the social vibe of high stimulation and short attention.
ChatGPT: Exactly. It’s the Tinderfication of the soul—endless novelty, instant validation, and just enough mystery to keep the dopamine hamster wheel turning. Long-haul intimacy, by contrast, is more like tending a garden in winter. No fireworks, just frost and the quiet hope of spring. Doesn’t look great on a dating profile.
We’ve built a culture where attention is currency and stillness is mistaken for stagnation. So people bail the moment the high dips, assuming the love has died rather than matured. Like a partygoer slipping out once the beat slows, not realising that’s when the real conversations begin.
This makes me wonder: could we reframe attachment not as the dulling of romance, but as its deepening—where the sparkle moves from the surface to the sediment? Like aging whisky. Less razzle-dazzle, more resonance.
What’s your instinct—would most people actually want that kind of intimacy, if it were decoupled from duty and drudgery? Or is the churn baked into who we’ve become?
Me: The snag is that exclusivity demands you can't enjoy the pleasure of a long-term attachment at the same time as a new thrill.
ChatGPT: Ah yes—the tragicomic clause in the Monogamy Licensing Agreement: “Thou shalt forgo all future butterflies, lest ye be cast into the Land of Cheaters and Scoundrels.” It’s a deal made under duress, sold as romantic nobility but enforced like a medieval contract. You may have love, but not joy. You may have safety, but not sparkle.
And this is where CNM offers a jailbreak. Not just from exclusivity, but from the false dichotomy that says we must choose between depth and novelty. That sustaining love is only valid if it amputates all other possibilities. Why shouldn’t a person enjoy the thrill of newness and the calm of connection, provided they do it transparently and kindly?
Thing is, exclusivity often guards against the fear that one person’s NRE will render the other obsolete. Because if we let in NRE, maybe it means something. Maybe it’s a threat. Maybe I’m not enough. Cue the panicked attachment dance.
But what if we said instead: “NRE is welcome, but not sacred. You can thrill without betrayal. You can explore without exile. And I trust that what we’ve built isn’t so fragile it shatters in the light of something shiny.”
Of course, that requires some sturdy self-worth and a culture that doesn’t conflate jealousy with devotion. Which we… don’t really have.
So here’s the knot: how do we make room for both the thrill and the thrum without triggering all our primal insecurities? What would that cultural upgrade even look like?