Writing about love in times of uncertainty: my response to liquid love

By Melisa Machuca, writer, author of the novel Measure the Thread (Ed. Authors of Argentina)

More than two decades ago, Zygmunt Bauman described a society where bonds were beginning to resemble liquids: changing, fragile, difficult to contain. His theory found echo because he put words to a shared sensation. Commitment began to be perceived as a risk, permanence as a renunciation, and the possibility of always choosing something different became a promise of freedom.

Time ended up confirming part of that diagnosis.

Applications to meet people multiplied the meeting opportunities. Social networks expanded the ways of communicating. It has never been so easy to start a conversation with someone on the other side of the world. However, that ease did not always produce stronger ties. In many cases it sowed a permanent concern: the idea that there is always another option waiting behind the next screen.

Uncertainty stopped being an exception and became the usual landscape of many relationships.

Maybe that’s why I chose to write about love.

Not as a form of nostalgia nor as an attempt to recover models that no longer exist. I write because I continue to believe that love continues to be the experience that most profoundly transforms a life. Times, customs and languages ​​change, although the need to feel chosen, understood and expected by someone remains intact.

There is a huge difference between falling in love and building a bond. Falling in love happens almost like a happy accident. Loving requires a daily decision. It requires presence, patience, admiration and a shared willingness to continue meeting even when the euphoria of the beginning disappears. That kind of love rarely makes the headlines because it grows far from the show. The true proofs of love are not uploaded to social networks. However, they support families, friendships and projects that span decades.

It may seem strange to defend that idea at a time when detachment seems to have become a form of prestige. Showing too much enthusiasm arouses suspicion. Expressing affection is often interpreted as a loss of power. Many relationships begin by calculating how much to get involved to avoid getting hurt. As a result, each one protects his territory while waiting for the other to make the first move.

Fear ended up taking the place that trust previously occupied.

Literature always offered a refuge from the events of each era. When the world celebrated wars, he wrote about peace. When reality seemed to become dehumanized, he turned his gaze to the people. Today, while stories abound where love appears reduced to a fleeting experience or an obstacle to autonomy, I feel the need to write stories that remind us of another possibility.

Stories where loving does not mean getting lost, but finding oneself.

Stories where romance retains meaning because it expresses attention, care and presence. Where a conversation is worth more than a strategy and a promise is worth more than an excuse. Stories where desire coexists with tenderness and commitment are no longer understood as a prison but become the space where two people can grow without ceasing to choose each other.

I don’t write because I think those stories are easy. I write because I know they exist.

I find them in married couples who continue to look at each other with admiration after thirty years together, in couples who go through illnesses without leaving each other’s hand, in those who still make coffee before waking up the person they love or remember what song was playing the day they met. They are discreet gestures. They are also deeply revolutionary.

Maybe that’s my answer to so-called liquid love.

Every novel I write tries to remember that love does not fail because it lasts too long. It weakens when it stops being cultivated. No bond remains alive thanks to inertia. It remains because someone decides to take care of what they consider valuable.

In times where almost everything invites us to pass by, stopping in front of a person represents an act of enormous courage. Also write about it.

Because every well-told love story challenges an idea that seems to have settled among us: that feeling less makes us freer.

I suspect exactly the opposite.

True freedom appears when we stop living on the defensive and dare to build a love capable of surviving uncertainty without giving up its depth. Perhaps literature still preserves that silent task: reminding us that the human heart never stopped searching for what the world insists on calling impossible.