Have you found your true love yet? No? Start the countdown, because the search for true love is inescapable in modern culture. Hidden not-so-deeply under every dating app guaranteeing a “perfect match,” rom-com where the girl gets “the guy,” and 14-carat engagement ring is an industry selling the idea that a woman is incomplete without her soulmate. 

The idea of the soulmate dates back to Ancient Greece’s playwright Aristophanes, whose myth tells the story of the original humans, born with two sets of limbs and two faces on one head. Fearing the power of humans, Zeus split them into two separate individuals, each condemned to spend the rest of their life searching for their other half. This narrative of incomplete existence is harmful to both men and women, as it promotes unrealistic standards for what love should look and feel like. However, I’d prefer to focus on how this ideal of “soulmates” targets women specifically. The commercialization of love primarily caters to women, but why and how?  

Perhaps explainable by traditional domestic roles, society expects the average woman to place love at the center of her world. Historically, these roles encourage women to put all of their energy into finding a husband, making a home, and becoming nurturers. In “Changing Ideals of Womanhood During the Nineteenth-Century Woman Movement,” Susan M. Cruea explains what it took to be a ‘True Woman’ in the 19th century, something so many women strived to become. The narrative of the ‘True Woman’ promised girls that motherhood and domesticity would bring them the utmost fulfillment. Women, then and now, are assured that all their effort in pursuit of this standard is worth it – a dream come true even – as long as they have their husbands’ love to show for it. 

Now, just because all women aren’t baking pies in checkered dresses doesn’t mean the domestic fantasy isn’t intact today, albeit more subtly. To evade contemporary feminist threats, women, from a young age, are sneakily plied with media content that entangles their self-worth with having a romantic partner. Coincidentally, production and consumption are exactly what the doctor ordered. The entanglement of self-worth and true love is most blatantly exposed in romance films. Take The Notebook (2004) for example: a beloved romance story in which a couple find their way back to each other against all odds. The film sells the idea that true love is a force stronger than anything else, which ultimately proves to be triumphant over the main character’s hardships – never mind that the relationship is toxic. This idea that ‘love conquers all’ is a harmful and untrue message to send to impressionable girls. Moreover, it doesn’t stray far from what girls were taught before the Women's Rights movement. It also seems to imply that the pursuit of true love excuses all wrongdoings, for the sole sake of them being done in the name of love. It’s all good that Noah climbs up a Ferris wheel and threatens to fall and kill himself if Allie won't agree to go out with him, and it’s all dandy that Allie cheats on her fiancé with Noah, because it’s true love, right? 

While The Notebook is about both man and woman being madly in love with each other, it is considered pretty obvious that most adorers of the film are women. The fact that this film, and really any romance film, seems to fall under the “chick flick” category shows the consistent perpetuation of romantic ideals forcibly molded into women’s values and the overarching commercialization of love. This is just one film example, but the media is oversaturated with content that over-romanticizes love, with the intent of commercializing it and selling it to women. It is worth noting that the box office revenue for romcoms in the United States and Canada in 2024 amounted to over 86 million USD, the dating app market revenue came out to 5.34 billion USD in 2022, and the global engagement ring market revenue amounted to a whopping 80.31 billion USD in 2023 (and is expected to hit 132.60 billion USD by 2032). What they are selling isn't even really the product itself, but the ideal that comes along with it. However, that ‘right person’ waiting to be found by each woman does not exist, and even if they did, they would not possess the ability to fill the hole the patriarchy created and you’ve been trying to fill your whole life, as the movies promise. We do not see this phenomenon play out with young men; instead, they are taught independence growing up. Men and husbands are expected to be providers who make the decisions and have the financial responsibility in households. 

Inspired by a recent conversation with my mother about societal pressures on women to find their “soulmate” before being deemed “past their prime”, I completely reframed my outlook when I realized it is simply not that important. It is not worth any woman’s time to fixate on how to find the perfect partner that will definitively be ‘the one’ for the rest of their life. Following one’s personal goals and journey is what brings women, and all people, fulfillment. Women should feel liberation in the discovery that soulmates are a myth, in both Ancient Greece and in our modern culture. So, in awareness of this myth, try to support less media that reinforces this trope.  

From this realization, I have found that the present is all we have – and can rely on – because no one can predict what will become of tomorrow. This is not to say women should discard the romanticization of love – on the contrary, love is simpler and more prevalent in life than the media portrays. If you’re in a loving relationship with someone who treats you well, then it does not matter if it is meant to be, whether it lasts forever or just for the foreseeable future; the love shared between the couple is enough. Unmasking this myth of the soulmate should not be something to mourn. Rather, it reveals a much more optimistic truth: love is ever-changing, forgiving, and nonconformist.