to be or not to be the stupid, foolish girl in love
can astrology and romantic delusion save us from lovelessness?
I’ve never been in love. Sometimes, it feels like my fatal flaw, and other times, it’s my greatest flex.
I’ve never allowed a guy close enough to tear my heart apart with his flesh-eating canines. I walk around relatively unscathed by dating trauma or a litany of complicated exes.
A string of failed, barely tangible situationships is all I have to show for my romantic history. It’s a bittersweet experience, or lack thereof.
Some people like to walk through the line of catastrophic fire for the sake of experiencing a relationship (Think Oprah running on hot coals). Me? I’d rather do a solo polar plunge naked in Antarctica.
If I had to dig past my avoidant tendencies, it’s really just the longing that makes my lovelessness sting. But the truth is that what I pine for in my uber-innovative, romantic writer brain isn’t totally based in reality.
My therapist would say my fear of intimacy and perception concocts delusions of grandeur that even the perfectionist part of me can’t live up to — let alone a flawed human boy. And no, it’s not because I’m a Scorpio Moon and a Virgo Venus.
Part of me knows why I stay away: the answer is simple. The prospect of a person making me the delusional girl in love makes me viscerally sick to my stomach. Letting someone have that much control over my emotions feels like I’m just an AI-chatbot girlfriend.
I wonder if ScarJo’s character, Samantha in “Her,” ever felt like she didn’t have any agency in her love story, too. Samantha healed a heartbroken, lonely man (played by sad boy Joaquin Phoenix) who she was meant to serve through her seductive and reassuring pornbot voice.
So I ponder…Are heterosexual women doomed to the fate of the delusional girl trope?
I’m watching the “Star Wars” series for the first time at 25. Do you know that Natalie Portman’s young Padmé died from love sickness while also still being able to give birth to her twins? She should’ve been at the club. Padmé isn’t the only female character to experience being nerfed because she was deeply in love.
“The White Lotus” is guilty as charged. In the HBO series’ third season, Aimee Lou Wood’s endearing, astrologically deluded Chelsea is a textbook cliché. Wood’s empathic portrayal of Chelsea draws you in through her Manchester accent and bohemian spirit.
But Chelsea’s downfall is that her unconditional love has no bounds, and that’s where the irony lies. She’s a 20-something, wellness-loving, woo-woo baddie obsessed with her 50-year-old traumatized, man-baby boyfriend, Rick (Walton Goggins). Their dynamic evolves into my nightmare fuel as the audience watches her obsessively fixate on his emotional unavailability. Rick’s unavailability also peaks through in his complete and utter disdain for his girlfriend.
Chelsea shrugs off Rick’s indifference as a temporary mood swing rather than a character flaw. To justify his erratic emotions and decisions, she speaks of fate. Everything bad happens in threes, but because of “amor fati” or fate of love, they are intrinsically linked together forever, she tells Rick in the fatal season finale. When he nonchalantly agrees that he plans to spend forever together, Chelsea is ecstatic, and I groan in disbelief.
She spends the entire season begging for Rick to see her, love drunk on his emotional distance and the crumbs of attention he throws her way like she’s a pigeon looking for food droppings.
But the truth is, Rick’s tortured masculinity keeps her wanting more. He’s a mystery that only her unflinching love and astrology can uncover. Chelsea’s passionate because she’s an Aries, and she thinks Rick’s secret world is hard to crack because he’s a Scorpio. But her anxious attachment has nothing to do with the stars.
She’s anxiously attached because she’d rather heal everything broken in Rick than dig out the hurt in her heart. The promises of a fated future ultimately leads to Chelsea’s unfortunate demise. Young, beautiful, hopeful, and delusional women who are tied to tortured men only have one end — a gunshot wound to their captain-save-a-hoe hearts.
I watched my first and last Woody Allen movie last week. As a strong believer in SJW-Tumblr era politics, I’ve long sworn off watching the prestigious film made by abusers. But because of its off-limits nature, years later, I finally caved. So I turned on Allen’s 2008, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” for science and of course, it was shit from the butt. For a lack of better words.
Outside of Rebecca Hall’s atrocious American accent, Johansson’s sexy, blonde bombshell typecast, and Javier Bardem playing the Latin Lover even though he’s Spanish, Allen’s perception of women’s desires and love feels limiting in the expansive, romantic backdrop of Barcelona.
You’re either a Vicky (Hall) — someone who is safe in love and chooses security. Or a Cristina (Johansson) — someone who is unpredictable, sensual, and jumps in with both feet.
By the end of the film, both Vicky and Cristina fly back to America disillusioned with their long-standing love values because they got the chance to fuck and love Bardem’s passionate, Juan Antonio (Bardem). What the hell, sure.
My romantic lovelessness makes me question whether this is really what’s out there for us? You love so hard your evil husband basically kills you, you’re are AI-girlfriend servicing someone’s every emotional needs, you’re a delusional astrology girl who gets herself killed “paying attention to the signs,” or your whirlwind Spanish affair opens the trap door of endless, insatiable desire?
Whether you’re the delusional girl or not, I can’t deny that their tenacious pursuit is sometimes admirable. I observe from the sidelines as I cancel dates because I hardly like anyone, ultimately too content with my sovereignty.
I guess the reality is that maybe they’re closer to finding love or heartbreak through their willingness to be vulnerable. Maybe I’m jealous that they can love despite the voices in their head.
But I still question if the endless pursuit of love, desire, and validation through danger is just reinforcing the media’s long-standing message that love obsession is inherently female-centered and driven.
I reject that notion, and I certainly reject being your ChatGBT-gf.