ROMANCE IS NOT DEAD

I confess: I am a romantic.

I still believe in romance.

Not the version Hollywood sells.

Not the fantasy of completion or the “need bubble” where two people disappear into mutual reassurance. And not the spiritual dismissal that treats longing as something to transcend or outgrow.

I mean romance as a conscious act.

A partnership with Love itself, expressed through a human life.

Commitment.

Trust.

Risk.

A sacred path.

Something closer to devotion than fantasy, where presence is the practice and truth is the vow.

I believe romance is ancient. Older than our cynicism. Older than our fear.

In some way, I think we are who the Stone has been romancing all along, shaped by time, pressure, and longing.

Romance lives in the blood of the soul, however it chooses to move through each of us.

I love to be romanced by curiosity.

By a meeting of minds and hearts.

By shared devotion to something neither of us owns, a question, a craft, a way of seeing that asks us both to grow.

The romance I believe in is born from two imperfect people willing to see their own edges and each other’s. People who understand that love is not safety without cost.

That it will ask something of us. That it may threaten parts of who we’ve been and that this, too, belongs.

Romance, to me, is a gesture of the entire person toward another, without self-abandonment.

It is staying open when closing would be easier. Remaining curious when fear wants certainty. Supporting the becoming of another even when it loosens our grip on who we thought we were.

There is a lot of language, especially in spiritual spaces, that warns against romance. As attachment. As illusion. As distraction. I’ve spoken that language myself, and much of it holds truth.

Romance does involve risk. It exposes fear. It invites loss.

But longing is not the problem.

What harms us is refusing to feel it fully within ourselves.

When longing is disowned, it becomes rejected / projected.

When it is owned, it becomes choice.

When I allow myself to feel longing without urgency or shame, it no longer runs my life.

I can direct it. Offer it. Let it be creative rather than consuming.

Romance then becomes not a collapse into another, but an offering made from wholeness.

At its best, romance is not an escape from the self, it is a place where the self is refined. Where eros meets integrity. Where love is not possession, but participation.

Some call this Eros.

I call it romancing Life.

Art by Lila Sterling

Photo by Lila