A Defense of Love in the Age of Independence

Love & Relationships  · 

At What Cost?

A defense of love in the age of independence

I was scrolling through Facebook the other day— when a post stopped me cold:

“I make my own money. I have my own house. I have my own car. I have complete freedom. Not needing a man is my biggest flex.”

And here’s the thing — on the surface, she’s right. In the material world, men and women no longer truly need each other. Both are fully capable of handling their own affairs. I respect that. I celebrate it, even.

But my heart whispered something I couldn’t ignore: Yes… but at what cost?

Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic. Maybe I’m out of step with the times. But I keep asking the questions nobody seems to want to sit with: What about love? What about the soul’s journey? What about the mirror that only an intimate partner can hold up for you?

Yes, we can be whole on our own. But what about our person — the one who sees us completely, knows every crack and contradiction, and loves us anyway? What about the connection that shows up in your chest before your brain can explain it? The hand that finds yours in the dark. The one whose hug makes you feel, instantly, like you are home?

In our rush to flex our independence, I wonder if we’re quietly trading something ancient for something hollow. When the noise of the day finally goes still — the notifications quiet, the obligations paused, the performance over — do the proudly self-sufficient truly feel complete? Or is there an ache in the silence that the flex was never designed to fill?

We have been writing about soulmates for thousands of years. The great prophets, the mystics, the poets — they all had equal partners. Across cultures and centuries, the longing for a true counterpart has been one of the most universal things about being human. So what changed?

What changed is that we began to compete where we were meant to complement. We turned the dance between the masculine and the feminine into a battle for dominance, and then we called the battlefield liberation. We are out here competing and bleeding all over each other, and love is harder to find and harder to hold than ever — and our culture reflects exactly that.

I’m not arguing for dependence. I’m not nostalgic for a world where women had no choice. What I’m arguing for is something deeper: the idea that a true partner is not a weakness or a need — they are a mirror. They are the person who reflects your soul back to you, who tests you and helps you grow into your highest self, who walks beside you not because they have to, but because they choose to, every single day.

That’s not a fairytale. That’s the most real thing there is.

“So ancient is the desire for one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two and healing the state of man… Each of us when separated is always looking for our other half. It is our nature. When one is met with the other half, the pair are lost in amazement of love, friendship, and intimacy. The desire and pursuit of the whole is called Love.”— Plato, The Symposium (Aristophanes’ speech)

Plato wrote that more than two thousand years ago. We were not meant to out-earn our loneliness. We were meant to find each other.

Flex your independence. Build your house. Drive your car. Own every inch of your life. And then — when you are ready — choose love anyway. Not because you need to. Because you want to. Because some things are worth fighting for, worth working through, worth seeing all the way to the raw and beautiful end.

As for me? I still believe. Not in a fairytale, but in a love that is real — the kind forged in patience and honesty and choosing each other through the mess of being human.

I still believe we can find our way back to the dance. Who is with me?