>>12458764Not really, since there's more to it than ritual. Romance in that sense is deferred knowledge, especially knowledge of sex gained through experience. Consider the principle of displacement at work when it comes to the difference between fantasy and reality, which will differ by sex as well as any other factor of disposition or aptitude that has some bearing on it. That it tends in the longer term to substitute person with place or setting, or general conditions of living, as the object of yearning, or a kind of fabricated nostalgia, is only to be expected, since the sensation, and the notion, that someone else can or will complete us regardless of all else, is an illusion that can't be disentangled from the will or eros, which in our species more than in any other is also a will to power over one's surroundings or habitat, as a builder's is. (See also The Extended Phenotype and just about anything pertaining to primate ethology.) It's an aspect of being humanly adequate, which is why it's only to beg for a match that's also disastrously inadequate to suppose there's something gained by dispensing with romance, or to allege that conspicuous physical allure is evidence of its lack. You can pretend all you like that brilliance and beauty and the charm of creative power can't come in the same package, or that most men and women don't want the best of all worlds regardless of whether they can get it, but to reduce it all to this retarded incel vs. chad narrative is an intentionally vicious waste for all concerned, whatever one's developmental seeds have, or haven't, in store when planted in adequate soil and cultivated according to the particulars of what they prove most responsive to. Yes there's irony to it, but hardly all, except when it comes to thoughts about the dead, or those dead to play.
