Whatever I can get

Love has never been easy. Characters in Jane Austen novels, for example, are so bound by the strict conventions of Regency England that even the smallest of romantic interactions—say, the decision to dance with someone at a ball—is fraught with tension. The 1922 book “Etiquette,” by etiquette expert Emily Post, is full of do’s and don’ts for men and women looking for love, but more importantly, marriage. Even with the rise of dating in the decades after, teenagers took in educational films in high school classrooms and read books with standardized lessons, leading to the quaint significance of letterman jackets and class rings.

But the rules of decorum dictating the personal lives of generations past simply don’t exist today. Etiquette columns have lost their influence, and the advice in “Cosmopolitan” articles invites derision more than devotion. There are no balls, with their stodgy but recognizable customs, but rather lawless bars and frat party dance floors. Ask 10 friends for their views on love and receive 10 completely different answers. What’s the equivalent of a letterman jacket today, anyway? Making a relationship official on Facebook? Perhaps it is Facebook itself that most succinctly describes the relationship status of our generation: “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” meaning no absolute dichotomy between single and taken but rather a spectrum of involvements, arrangements, and attachments. Complicated, meaning an absence of inherited structures and the burden of creating our own. Complicated, meaning fewer expectations and fewer obligations, greater possibilities for fulfillment, and greater possibilities for rejection.

Much has been made of casual relationships—our contribution to romantic history. Casual relationships, to those pining for the more conservative romances of the past, are symptomatic of our generation’s casual attitude toward life in general. The fear of responsibility that keeps us from holding steady jobs translates into a fear of going steady itself. Our selfishness and narcissism, epitomized by public profile pages and photo albums, translate into romantic relationships predicated on immediate gratification and pleasure. Our indecision and sense of entitlement translate into the desire for multiple objects of affection, displayed like dolls on a bookshelf rather than a single portrait in a locket.

Hollywood has cashed in on the trend recently with two movies whose titles alone suggest the haziness of modern love: “No Strings Attached,” the Natalie Portman-Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy about two people who begin a casual sexual relationship without that ancient ritual of commitment, and “Friends with Benefits,” a film with a similar storyline but starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. “Do you want to do this,” asks Natalie Portman’s character in the former, “use each other for sex at all hours of the day and night, and nothing else?” Yes, of course, is the response.

And yet, these Hollywood films are in some ways not so different from the traditional, educational ones shown in health classes in the ’50s—the two characters, predictably, fall in love. In trying to subvert those old traditions, these films enforce their own. The happy ending isn’t one of detached romantic involvement, self-gratifying sex, or freedom from commitment at all. The happy ending is still the happy ending of Jane Austen and Emily Post: love and marriage.

What, then, is our generation’s real stance on love?

Perhaps the great thing is that we don’t have one. The Bible says love is patient, but maybe love can be in the casual relationship started by two people too impatient to find it. Love is not about wearing class rings or professing “In a Relationship” online—feel free to do both or none. Live together and get married or keep separate apartments; spend every minute together or see each other once a week. There are no rules.

Our contribution to romantic history isn’t the casual relationship as a careless afterthought, the avoidance or fear of commitment and emotional intimacy. Instead, it is the impulse that relationships should be defined not by books, magazines, society, or family, but by the people within them.

“It’s Complicated” describes the love lives of college students for many reasons—because of the excitement and excesses of first independence, the inevitabilities of dorm living arrangements and nonexistent curfews, the trial-and-error method that is growing up. And perhaps we have it particularly rough: As residents of New York, we’re bombarded with social interactions of all kinds every day, and as Columbia students, we’re notorious overachievers too busy to eat lunch, let alone take long romantic strolls in the park. But those complications are just opportunities to create the kind of relationships we want to be a part of. In the vacuum of stifling rules and expectations, modern love should be about relationships that are not designed by others looking in, but by those in them, looking toward something together.

Aarti Iyer is a Columbia College senior majoring in creative writing. She is the former editor-in-chief of The Fed. Culture Vulture runs alternate Tuesdays.