Romantic love’s redemptive promise now conflicts with our embrace of uncertainty

Evidence

As we have seen, speculative imagination draws on promissory instruments as a way of engaging with failed promises and broken contracts. Through their fervent speculative activity, members of speculative communities anticipate unpredictability and submit to life’s radical contingencies. In contemporary intimate relations, actual romantic connection is of course itself inherently volatile and largely unpredictable, and in that sense our engagement with it can only be speculative. The redemptive promise of sexual, emotional, and romantic fulfillment (especially when seen as a building block for long-term commitment and family stability) is increasingly at odds with our endorsement of uncertainty itself, our awareness that romantic love is no longer possible—at least not in the way it used to be. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 232

Categorization

• DEFINE: First instance of applying the speculative imagination framework to the intimate domain, establishing continuity with the book’s core concept.
• XREF: connects to: Weakened marriage security made romantic love both more sought and more distrusted — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 350