rant end.

What about the term "riptide romance"? Nah.
I kind of find it funny how people can be openly dishonest with themselves, something I can never quite achieve to the level of which is currently on my noggin. People are, on the whole, annoying creatures. They're constantly fighting their nature, fighting realism, fighting against everything that is, and might be, anything. I find it annoying, amusing, trivial, transparent, simplistic, and entirely unnecessary. But they won't realize that any time soon, if ever, so how about I go ahead and cough up some text on the subject?
The entire concept of romance seems as though it's being bastardized by my generation (though this may change when we start hitting the ol' midlife crisis, so that it might be passed onto the next generation). Romance has become an overdramatized soapbox of trepidation - yet another annoying label for us to bear as a whole.
We all have our own overbearing issues and crippling disorders to triumph, sure - but there are limits. Humanity, humanity, humanity is a beast, an incomprehensible number of bodies, of litres of blood, of souls. We all fall in love, whether we define it in that manner or not is of no consequence to me, because loosely termed it's the best way to describe it. To love, to marry, to share in age, and to bask in a wealth of good health. It's not about falling to the status quo, or succumbing to conformity - you idiots. It's about life - it's about evolution - it's about the continuation of the species sure. But since we're humans, it's about emotion. It's about the future. It's about aspiration. It's about everything and anything.
If you don't think you're going to fall in love, to copulate and in turn reproduce, if you're "against" that very idea, then I'm glad you won't be the ones doing it. Humanity won't need to suffer, nor survive your stupidity and masochism.
Even my friends that still claim they'll never be with someone again - that they'll definitely never marry - that they'll never have children.. I kind of feel bad for them to be honest. Humans are dragged along by their feelings - commonly referred to as what they feel in their heart (which is a simplistic way of describing that tight feeling in your chest when you're emotionally committed to a situation).
I feel bad for them, but at the same time I know it's alright. The majority of people who are standoffish on the topic will meet someone. Or realize how they feel about another. The ball will roll, and the feelings of anxiety, confusion, and nonconformity will simply melt away.

There's that group of people, who needlessly lie to themselves - but there is another group that needs addressing forthright. Those who are in denial about the reality that is relationships and the sharing of human emotion. Sometimes it's because they're emotionally broken, like myself, and unlike myself unable to overcome themselves. Other times it's simple stupidity (a word I seem to like lately), a quaint disregard for how the world actually works, and paving their own special individualistic cell in which they must equate irrationally that "My sour one month relationship definitely hurts worse than my Grandfather felt when his wife of sixty years passed away, and his consequent near suicide." That may be an exaggeration, but I think you'd be surprised if you delved a little deeper with some of these people. And it's not just that emotional and logical disconnect that I'm encompassing with the word "stupidity" either.
It's the ones that are more.. Simple than that. The people that simply give up before ever really starting - who've had no real experience in the world and feel they have full comprehension of how it all works.
To those people, I have this to say:
While it's not difficult to comprehend by any means, it's definitely something you can't even begin to understand until you've stood there with your own feet. Talking to a best friend about their broken string of hellish relationships that eventually end in keyed trucks, stalking, and house fires doesn't offer you any actual experience. The fact of the matter is - you don't understand how the whole thing works until it's your truck that got keyed, you that's being stalked, or your house that was set on fire (or your exes truck you keyed and set on fire while he was inside during your stalk-happy-rampage).
Even things as endlessly simplistic as an embrace (note, I'm not saying hug, those close semi-empty things you share with friends, but embrace, I even put it in italics so you'd notice) is going to be beyond your comprehension until you share one. And don't get me wrong, even then you have a ways to go. A lingering kiss, a candlestick dinner, a spur-of-the-moment adventure to nowhere, a sky full of bright stars, a night of passion - they're all beyond you until you're brave enough to put yourself out there. The issue here isn't whether or not they're good enough, it's all on you.
And some advice to you, you who totes imaginary experience and situations, you who speaks as though you know better than those who have, and are going through these moments in your life..
It'll hurt.
I can't say how often, if at all.
Maybe you'll meet Miss/Mister Perfect-for-you right off the bat.
But the entire concept of opening yourself up to someone,
is also giving that person the ability to cause harm.
You may not think you're strong enough for that,
but I honestly think you'd be beyond surprised.

A few moments of genuine happiness,
a few memories of times that were,
are sometimes all it takes to make the hurt worthwhile.

So my fakey wakey shake and bakes, how about putting yourself out there to get stepped on now and then? It's definitely not your whole "No one walks all over me, by Jove," thing so much as your cowardice to start looking. "What if they turn me down?" you ask? "What if they don't like me?" you ask? "What if things are too complicated to work?" you ask, you ask, ask ask ask ask ask.
I say those questions are cowardice as well. They're procrastination, they're fear.
Because what if they don't turn you down? If they do, then you have closure and you're not hung up on it.
What if they do like you? If they don't, oh well, you're an adult now - act like one.
What if things work out well? To assume there's no such thing as complication in a healthy adult relationship is naive and silly. Complication comes in colours from "best friends ex" to "difference in religion". Complication is  easily described as a pillar of failure, or a hurdle on the track. Knock it down, jump over it - it doesn't matter as long as you overcome it. Because when you do, you'll feel much better.
You have no reason not to act like an adult and chase your human desires, so just fucking do it already and stop filling everyone around you with lies - it's annoying them.

Random bizarre rant - end.