Written by Anisha Shinde
When did we stop experiencing romance and start performing it? The shift happened gradually, almost imperceptibly. Now, romantic gestures are no longer simply acts of affection; they’ve become content. The flowers your boyfriend gives you aren’t complete without a photo; Valentine’s Day dinners require an Instagram story; even handwritten notes are posted to close friends. At some point, romance transitioned into something we do for an audience that may or may not actually care.
Social media platforms, particularly Instagram and TikTok, have been instrumental in transforming love into public spectacles. Receiving a thoughtful gift is insufficient; it must be documented, captioned, and shared. Dates are not merely opportunities to spend time together; they are content creation sessions that require proper lighting and aesthetic coordination. Ever since technology has established its tenacious relevance in modern society, an entirely new genre of relationship content has emerged, establishing an implicit expectation that being in a relationship means you should be producing content about it.
This raises the question of ‘why’ we feel compelled to broadcast our relationship. Perhaps part of it is validation. Posting about your relationship serves as social proof that you are loved, that you are chosen, that someone thinks you are worth grand public gestures. There may also be an element of competition: when everyone else’s boyfriend appears to be doing elaborate gestures online, yours should too, right? You feel the pressure for your own relationship to measure up. And the algorithm certainly doesn’t discourage this. Couple content generates a significant amount of engagement. Romance, in this context, sells. Consequently, we continue posting, performing, and converting private moments into public displays.
Sadly, this creates a strange tension when your partner isn’t what we might call ‘content-friendly’. What happens when your boyfriend doesn’t want to be on camera? When he’s private, when he doesn’t think posting about your relationship is necessary? Suddenly, ‘he doesn’t perform romance in photogenic ways’ has come to mean ‘he’s not romantic.’ We’ve conflated genuine intimacy with performed intimacy, and we’re not sure they can coexist anymore.
When did ‘just us’ stop being enough?
Then there’s the economic reality that no one wants to talk about. The version of romance we see on TikTok or Instagram involves elaborate bouquets that cost £50+, dinners at trendy restaurants that run £100+ for two, surprise weekend trips, and designer gifts. But we’re students. We’re eighteen, nineteen, even in our early twenties. Most of us don’t have salaries. We’re splitting modest meals and calling it a successful date night. The gap between Instagram expectations and actual student budgets is massive. Yet, we’re still holding our relationships to standards set by influencers who are often older, have brand partnerships, or are dating people with actual disposable income. It’s not a fair comparison, but we make it anyway.
Importantly, this doesn’t mean romance on a budget is any less meaningful. Handmade bouquets, love letters, carefully chosen small gifts, the occasional splurge at a Covent Garden restaurant—these are just as significant, if not more so. The problem here isn’t the budget; it’s that we’ve been conditioned to believe expensive equals romantic, and anything less doesn’t qualify as ‘content-worthy.’ In truth, real affection doesn’t need a price tag, but try explaining that when your feed is full solely of luxury gestures.
What effect does this have on romance itself? When the priority during a romantic moment becomes getting the right photo rather than being present, something has been lost. When you’re doing romantic things not because you want to but because you need content, the gesture loses meaning. We’ve reached a point where we have to ask ourselves: If this could not be posted, would it still hold value? If the answer is no, then we must reconsider what we are actually doing.
Romance hasn’t died, but it’s been fundamentally restructured around an audience. We’re no longer asking ‘does this make me happy?’ but ‘will this look like it makes me happy?’ The most damaging and scary part isn’t the performance itself—it’s that we’ve forgotten there’s supposed to be a difference between the two. When private moments disappear entirely, when every gesture needs external validation, we’re not building relationships—we’re building content calendars. Somewhere in the process of making our love visible to everyone else, we risk making it invisible to ourselves.
