The term “delulu” irritates me to no end.

Not only with the word itself and how it’s said (delulu and the cutesy way it’s said is simply annoying), but also the definition. While I do find it funny to imagine unbelievable scenarios and play around with the infinite double meanings of everything we see, it can be irritating, and brings up an even bigger conversation.

The desire for companionship. In our generation, so many people desire and seek love so much, to the point that they’ll settle for anyone in front of them. I’ve only noticed it in our generation, and while it is entirely possible that this fear of being alone the rest of our lives was prominent in other generations as well, it has only been exemplified due to social media. There’s an alarming amount of people who post online about how sad it is to look around you and feel alone while everyone else is in a relationship and when people post cute videos about their relationship, the comments are filled with “I wish I had this.”

Longing and desiring to be in a relationship soon turns into true desperation. Anytime anyone would give someone else an ounce, a pint, a smidge of romantic attention, the attraction was instant. Really, I’ve observed it happening with any sort of attention. People get attention from someone, they get together immediately, and (big shocker) soon enough, problems start arising because they’re literally strangers.

Now, not every immediate relationship is doomed to fail of course, and I’m not suggesting someone wait months and months before getting into a relationship. That is not the point. The point is why they got into a relationship in the first place. They didn’t get into a relationship because they genuinely liked the person. They only got into a relationship because they were lonely and wanted attention.

And let me make this perfectly clear. That’s okay. I understand the feeling of loneliness and wanting that attention. They’re not negatives and are perfectly acceptable responses to how our generation acts with the idea of love. However, they can turn into negatives and that’s what makes them so annoying to me.

“Why are they so rude?”

“They did something I didn’t like, but it’s okay because they talk to me.”

“I’m not going to find anyone else.”

It becomes a genuine problem because they excuse the problems in the relationship in order to keep the attention and love that feels good sometimes. To some extent, I feel as if this is normal; there are always going to be bad relationships (romantic or not) that are going to be unhealthy. All that’s important in the end is that you learn, grow, and come out better on the other side. But from what I’ve witnessed, it isn’t just your learning experience. It wears other people down as well.
Telling friends and family about the problems in the relationship might lead to genuine advice, but most never take it because it might lead to the end of the attention and love. Instead, they ignore it and simply go to them to complain about it all, just to never try to do anything about it. And let me make this very clear. Each situation is different, and I have a very different stance to abusive relationships in this field. However, in general, speaking of a highschool relationship where one partner is being a jerk to the other, where that person simply complains and complains about it all to their friends; not only does it put a strain on their friends, but it also just puts a strain on their relationship.

It’s an irritating never ending cycle because the want is too much to ever get out of it.

As said before, I believe a massive reason for this era of love is because of social media. Social media will forever continue to perpetuate falsehoods on life. First with body image, luxurious and or exciting lives, and now with the infinite rise of this delusion on love.

Black or aesthetic screens with sad poem texts about love, couples dancing to sad music, or doing/saying enormously sappy and cute things to each other, all culminating to have the person on the other side feel left behind and sad that they don’t have anything. So with no relationship experience, they go out desperate to find that something and even when it gets bad, excuses it because they think it’s all they’ll ever have.

Along the same vein, people being delusional and creating an idea in their head of another that’s false. While I take this delusional aspect mostly as a joke, it still can have deeper grooves than just what we see at the surface level.

But the real question is how do we fix it all? How are we going to be able to get this generation out of such a conundrum?

Well, one of my main solutions to these sorts of emotional issues is actually just time. As annoying as I find it all, eventually, growing up will make most on this trend mature and grow from it. Some might not change, but for the most part, people will realize how annoying and damaging it is for them. I believe as long as time allows it and people allow themselves to grow, even by a little, it’ll all fix itself.

It’s one of the easier fixes as no one has to do anything themselves as the next one is way more difficult. It goes back to the problem on social media in general. As alluded to before, social media has a history of showing the fakeness of life with a multitude of things. It’s important to either counterpost, to inform, and/or to completely stop it. This will make people realize their errored mentality and even better yet, prevent more people from falling down that rabbit hole as well.

It’s one of the most prevalent issues in our generation in my opinion. The fact that someone can go so crazy over love is understandable but crazy nonetheless, and is something that needs to be addressed and talked about more. It’s making people hurt and even splitting people from each other. So the pining, the desire, the delusion…is it really all worth it?