Romance Exists: Why You Deserve An Epic Love Story

It’s no secret that our generation is killing romance.

Between our inability to communicate our feelings and emotions to the many dating apps we use, our ideas about love and dating have evolved while our ideas about romance have slowly become jaded and apathetic.

Articles tell us that women are too impatient and cyclical for modern-day romance while men of this generation are portrayed as too simple and uncaring to pull off any grand romantic gestures.

We’re the hook-up generation, content with being labeled as such and writing off romance as old-fashioned and vintage.

Nothing made that seem truer than this past weekend when I went with some girlfriends to see the new Blake Lively movie, “Age of Adeline.”

For the most part it delivered and struck a strange balance between "The Notebook" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

However, it served as more a love story about the place I call home: California’s gorgeous Bay Area.

I'm familiar with Lively (who spends most of the movie making every woman in America hate her body) from her roles on "Gossip Girl" and in the movie, "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," both of which I thought she was the least talented person on the sets.

In Adeline, there are also many smaller parts, too, and then a surprise appearance by Harrison Ford, who probably crashed his plane on purpose after being somehow tricked into semi-starring in this movie.

But, what was romantic about the movie was the way it captured love in all its timelessness as something magical and transfixing.

I sat there as the credits rolled by and wondered quietly if I had ever experienced a love so grand it sounded like a movie plot.

I wondered if I even knew anyone who had experienced something as mystical as falling in love the way this movie made falling in love seem to be.

That heart-stopping, earth-shattering, time-stands-still type of love that seemingly exists in present day within the movie, but seemed almost unbelievable as something that occurs on a regular basis.

Now, believe me, I understand real life is not always the rom-com Katherine Heigl makes it out to be.

There are only a few movies I can think of that show the complexity and subtle nuances that falling in — and subsequently being in — love with another person entails ("Her," "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Love Actually").

Yet, long after we left the movie theater, I was still thinking about romance and passion and why it was seemingly so rare in real life.

I count the number of times I have been in love post-college at two.

Both were with guys I seriously considered spending the rest of my life with, and while having met them at completely different points in my 20s, they were extremely similar.

They were nice, loving, attractive and fun. Our relationships were formed on solid friendships and lots of sex that, at the time, felt a lot like passion.

Hindsight being 20/20, I guess you could say both times, there was less of an automatic chemistry than one that was built over time.

Date nights consisted of movies and dinner or bowling with friends with the romantic part being that I didn’t have to pay for an extra glass of wine with dinner.

If it sounds like a complaint, it’s not. Everything told me I was one of the “lucky ones,” and I reveled in the fact that I had someone who called me more than just a “friends with benefits...” publicly... on Facebook.

That was my idea of romantic.

The average, mundane continuity disguised as love is what our generation has settled for.

Gen-Yers are simply amazed if we find someone who wants to be with us, let alone someone who makes everyone else in the room disappear and who will slightly stalks/track us down just for an opportunity to have a date.

I have to believe that sort of love exists.

I believe the right guy will open doors for you and you will look at him across the table and think, “holy hell, how the f*ck is this happening?”

I believe the right girl is so gorgeous, you will actually see fireworks when she smiles that make your toes melt.

I believe in kismet fate and out-of-the-box first dates that seemingly last forever because you want them to.

I believe in kisses so powerful they take your breath away, and talking on the phone all night, laughing and learning about the other person.

I know that there are men out there who will cook you dinner to try and impress and woo you and take you places you have never been to see things you have never seen before.

I’m sure there are women out there who are charming and funny and classic, not only in the way they dress, but in the way they behave and act toward others.

I don’t think it’s far fetched to dream about meeting someone who, as cyclical and jaded as dating in this generation will want to make you become, somehow manages to make you believe in soul mates.

The best part about this love — this fairy tale, movie plot kind of love — is that we all deserve it.

Romance won't die if we believe there are people who will bring it to us.

Decent people — people with dreams and aspirations — should demand an epic love story because that is the only kind of love that transcends time and space.

It doesn’t matter whom you love the goal is to be with someone whom, when other people ask you how you met, the story itself doesn’t even seem real.

As hard as it is to imagine something so powerful, corny and possibly vomit inducing, it exists.

All you have to do is wait and believe until it’s time for your story to begin.