Whatever we imagine as a universal truth might be just a product of a specific environment (alone). The greatest love stories we hear could be unique to specific individuals, time or environment. We are an adaptable species. If our environment is violent or tragic, then all our mental energy will be spent on survival and recovery. There is no room for romance. The problem starts when we start mapping and force-fitting other people’s idea of a romantic relationship (from a different era or environment) onto our own.

What a relationship meant 100 years ago is entirely different from how we see it today. And it will be totally refreshed 50 years from now. The way an African mine-worker experiences a relationship will be very different from a New Yorker in love.

The richer a country is, the more likely its population will keep redefining the definition of relationship with every Valentine’s Day. It will have the luxury to get creative with the idea of love and romantic relationships. The more materialistic a society is, the greater the likelihood that it will have a million things to spend money on, to maintain a healthy companionship. Consumerism will be at its peak. The idea of romance is likely to get flamboyant and expensive.

Brands and media-persons have equal stakes in every relationship. They are the ones who occupy the thoughts of lovers at a subconscious level. They define and redefine what love is and how relationships must be conducted. After all, they have to make good sales on February 14 every year. You might have the remote for your TV, but it is the TV programs, ads, and social media that are the real controller of your thoughts, remotely.

A typical romantic relationship in NYC could mean frequent romantic dinner dates, exchanging bespoke gifts, flowers, different clothing for different occasions such as formal events, clubbing, and intimate bedroom moments. The list is endless.

Now, rollback time to the middle of World War 2 when cities like London, Berlin, etc. were getting bombed, and much of the homes were damaged. Forget romantic relationships, people were lucky if no one from the family died. Just after Bolshevism in Russia, tens of millions of people died due to hunger. Forget romance, having just one meal would have saved so many children, women, and men. Due to Churchill’s policies, 4 to 6 million Bengali Indians died due to hunger. Just a plate of rice a day would have saved so many lineages from disappearing forever from planet earth.

If I am reading this, then my great-grandparents survived all of that. Now imagine how spoiled we have to complain about insignificant things missing from our relationship. People do not realize how high their standards have gone up and how privileged their lives have become. However, these choices are neither permanent nor will be relevant forever. One mega geological or manmade event can shake the whole foundation of such beliefs, but the ego knows no bounds.

Everyone’s situation is unique. Every environment is different. Most people tend to feel dissatisfied with their relationship the moment they start comparing their uniqueness with other unique equations. The ego always wants to expand, it wants more, and it wants everything.

A few generations back, there were no television sets, social media, the internet or telephones. A small community by the hills probably lived a very quiet and slow life. In all likelihood, a romantic relationship meant knowing each other’s family, time together, long walks, men going about outside work, and women tending to household affairs. The duties were defined, and individual roles were clear. Life was fairly predictable. Extra activities were limited, distraction was minimal, and responsibilities abundant. Expectations from the partner would have been more aligned with the practical requirements of those days and influenced by the environment they lived in.

We weren’t carrying small screen devices in our pockets all the time consuming an endless stream of content that is constantly shaping our thoughts on matters of relationship and love. Today, we are bombarded with messaging of all kinds that influence us either financially or politically. In this confusion and overlapping of conflicting ideas, our brain will not be able to appreciate what we have in hand. Instead, we will always focus on what we do not have.

In a way, we have outsourced our thoughts to marketers and allowed them to dictate our relationships. Brainwashing is real. Our focus changes from who we truly are to how we want to appear. From the difficult life (of a damp and cold Western Europe) to the modern-day comfort (of centrally air-conditioned homes and malls), we have come a long way. Our environment keeps changing, we also change with it; so too our views on relationships.

As our societies become stable (free of wars and chaos), we tend to have more time in our hands and extra money to spend. Our idea of life and relationships expands. We develop a taste for outward expression of love and luxury. Laborious efforts are replaced by material and sensory experiences. The journey is outward, not inward. At a subconscious level, these realities slowly build unreasonable expectations from our partner as now we can afford to pay others to buy a whole collection of experiences.

Modern dating means experiencing 100 different activities together at 100 different locations wearing 100 different clothes while taking 100 different selfies, spending 100s of dollars and 100s of “I love you” and love you back text messages. All of this is only because we can.

In a consumerism-based economy, we spend less time together inside and more time outside. We need constant movement (for fine dining, cafe hopping, and vacations) to feel relevant. The entire time, we seek pleasure and entertainment for a short-term sensory high — just like a drug addict. We spend less time learning about our partner, instead we prefer to closely observe other people’s lives. We often dress sharply not to look good for our partner but to be noticed by strangers. And new-age folks need regular doses of external validation — real life and social media.

The more we hang out at places designed to make us spend, dress smart and look attractive, the more new ideas we bring back home on how to view our partner, what to expect from them and the changes we want to see in them. It is like a slow poisoning of the mind. Everything we see, touch and experience influences our thoughts, and we do no realize that. Our idea of a relationship is not based on the realism around a person we are committed to, instead, it is based on how much we can milk a human being to satisfy our idea of a successful relationship. Once we borrow, we begin to forcefully fit a circular cap on a rectangular jar. The more we are brainwashed by our environment the more likely we are to torture our partner.

We give more priority to the selfish pursuit of constant sensory pleasures, self-image, and status over peace of mind and contentment. Just because our current environment allows us to have more free time, more disposable income and choices, doesn’t mean we must keep upgrading our relationship experiences. By doing this, we are not only putting pressure on our partner to keep performing and outperforming others, but we are also draining out our limited life force. We read, watch and hear so much on the efforts needed to make a relationship work but pay so little attention to every moment of it. Very little or no effort goes towards deepening the connection with our partner.

Today’s relationships fail easily because the existing environment allows big egos to become even bigger and demand more from the partner; a self-sabotaging move in the long run. And people fall into that trap subconsciously. Just because our environment is safer today with relatively no wars, famine and mass calamities, we have the liberty to seek pleasure, act on our impulses and create new ideas of romance. But these fleeting ideas are just ideas. The more personalities and roles we carve out of our partner, the more complex and draining it will be to live with each other.

Therefore, even if your environment allows you to be flamboyant, stay simple (in your expectations) and do not get addicted to momentary highs. Our environment will always try to seduce and entice us to keep pushing the boundaries (including relationships), but you can only push things so much before it backfires.