romantic attraction is FAKE: a presentation

Main Ideas

Romance Is Shaped by Social Conventions

The presentation’s title is provocative rather than literal. Dorian is not arguing that romantic feelings are imaginary. Instead, the presentation suggests that romantic attraction and romance are shaped by social conventions: they are real experiences, but not timeless, natural categories with one fixed meaning.

Dorian compares romance to gender and other social constructs. Such constructs are not immutable facts of nature, but they can have substantial effects on people’s lives. Romantic desires are valid, while expectations about what relationships should look like may come from cultural rules rather than from the desires themselves.

Different Forms of Attraction

Attraction can be understood as several distinct impulses:

• Aesthetic attraction: wanting to look at or appreciate someone’s appearance, voice, or other appealing qualities.
• Sensual attraction: wanting physical contact, such as hugging, holding hands, or giving a high five.
• Sexual attraction: wanting sexual contact.
• Emotional attraction: wanting closeness, friendship, or a meaningful bond.

These forms of attraction can occur separately. None—including emotional attraction—is required for a relationship to be understood as romantic. People may want romance without sex or touch, and they may have sex or emotional closeness without romantic attraction.

Dorian’s proposed core definition of romantic attraction is an impulse to romanticize one’s relationship with another person. What that impulse looks like in practice is heavily influenced by what people expect romance to involve.

Relationship Expectations and Intimacy

Romantic relationships often come with social expectations, such as exclusivity, meeting family, sharing a home or finances, getting married, and raising children. The presentation argues that no individual activity is inherently romantic; its meaning depends substantially on people’s intentions and cultural frameworks. Similar forms of closeness or commitment can also occur in non-romantic relationships.

Dorian also distinguishes relationships by degree of intimacy rather than by category:

• In the conventional model, friendship and partnership are different types of relationship.
• In Dorian’s model, relationships can have different levels of closeness, commitment, and boundaries.

Under this view, partners can still be friends, and people can adjust boundaries to suit their needs. Terms such as “friends with benefits,” “situationship,” and “queerplatonic relationship” can describe arrangements that do not fit neatly into the conventional romance framework.

Historical Perspectives on Romance and Marriage

Dorian’s historical account suggests that modern romance has a relatively recent shape. The presenter connects contemporary dating and romantic roles to Victorian-era changes, arguing that marriage shifted from being primarily a financial or political arrangement toward being associated with love and individual identity. Dorian presents parts of this account as speculation and notes that some of the research was not fully traced.

Historical examples also challenge the idea that marriage has always been the ultimate intimate bond. Drawing on queer historian Kaz Rowe, Dorian discusses medieval same-sex unions and traditions that treated friendship as an exceptionally intimate, even spiritual, connection. The presentation cautions against assuming that historical people understood themselves through modern labels such as “gay” or “straight.” Its broader point is that the boundaries between friendship, marriage, and love have varied across time and cultures.

Aromanticism and Individual Needs

Dorian emphasizes that aromantic people do not all feel the same way about intimacy; aromanticism is a spectrum. Dorian’s own desired closeness can resemble what many people associate with romance, including domestic life, deep familiarity, mutual reliance, sex, and creative compatibility. At the same time, romantic labels, weddings, and public displays of affection may feel uncomfortable.

The presentation’s broader proposal is that reconsidering romance as a social framework could encourage people to ask more directly what kinds of intimacy and commitment they want, rather than assuming that all close relationships should follow the same milestones.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Dorian — the presenter and primary speaker.
• Unnamed audience members or interlocutors — briefly respond, ask about the music, and participate in the Q&A. A person named Joel is mentioned, but the subtitles do not clearly establish his role as a speaker.
• Kaz Rowe — queer historian whose video Medieval Knights Are/Were a Lot Gayer Than You Think is cited as a source.
• Doc Chemers — credited by Dorian with introducing the idea that social constructs are not immutable but have real effects.
• Michel Foucault — quoted in the discussion of how identities such as “the homosexual” emerged.
• Saint Aelred of Rievaulx and Ambrose — quoted on the spiritual and intimate value of friendship.
• “Just Friends” — identified during the Q&A as the song playing; it is not presented as a source for the argument.