The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional

Host:
The city night was thick with heat and silence — the kind that feels heavy enough to bruise. The lights outside the window burned faintly gold, seeping through half-closed blinds, striping the room with shadows that fell across books, papers, and the ash of old conversations.

A small fan hummed lazily on the desk, stirring cigarette smoke into slow halos. Against the far wall hung a poster of Simone de Beauvoir, half-hidden by stacks of philosophy texts and half-drunk glasses of red wine.

Jeeny sat by the window, one leg tucked beneath her, a cigarette between her fingers — the smoke rising in elegant defiance. Her brown eyes burned with quiet conviction, but there was sorrow too — that melancholy only truth seems to bring.

Across the room, Jack leaned against the bookshelf, sleeves rolled up, his grey eyes sharp but tired — a man caught between understanding and guilt. The two of them were surrounded by words, yet suspended in silence.

Jeeny broke it first, her voice low and certain:

"The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned for sexual activity." — Kate Millett

Jeeny:
(quietly)
There it is — the romance stripped bare. No violins. No candlelight. Just power.

Jack:
(softly)
And truth. But brutal truth.

Jeeny:
Truth usually is.

Jack:
It’s unsettling — to see love framed as a social mechanism instead of a miracle.

Jeeny:
That’s because it’s both. The miracle lives inside the manipulation.

Jack:
(skeptical)
You think love is inherently political?

Jeeny:
I think everything that decides who’s allowed to feel, and how, is political.

Jack:
But she’s saying love itself is weaponized.

Jeeny:
Yes. Romantic love — not love in its pure form. The story we’re taught to crave. The one written to keep women forgiving, men desiring, and society tidy.

Host:
The fan clicked, its slow rhythm punctuating the silence like a metronome of discomfort. Outside, the sound of distant laughter floated up from the street — the laughter of the oblivious, the comfortably conditioned.

Jack:
You know, part of me hates this.

Jeeny:
(looking up)
Why?

Jack:
Because it makes love sound fake — like every confession I’ve ever made was just playing a role I didn’t even know I was auditioning for.

Jeeny:
Maybe it wasn’t fake. Maybe it was just shaped.

Jack:
By ideology.

Jeeny:
Exactly. You didn’t invent the script — you just learned your lines early.

Jack:
(smiling bitterly)
So what, every time I’ve said “I love you,” it was propaganda?

Jeeny:
No, Jack. It was still human. Just human under patriarchy.

Jack:
And what does that make me — the villain or the victim?

Jeeny:
Neither. Just the participant.

Host:
The light from the window shifted, catching the edges of Jeeny’s hair, turning it to amber. Her voice softened, but her words stayed sharp — like silk hiding a blade.

Jeeny:
Millett wasn’t condemning love. She was diagnosing it — showing how the institution twists the emotion to serve a hierarchy.

Jack:
So love becomes a transaction, not a liberation.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Society tells women that sex is only acceptable when baptized by love — so they search for love not as a choice, but as permission.

Jack:
And men, knowing that, can use the idea of love as currency.

Jeeny:
Yes. Emotional leverage disguised as devotion.

Jack:
That’s… horrifying.

Jeeny:
And ordinary.

Jack:
(pausing)
You’re saying even tenderness can be control.

Jeeny:
Especially tenderness. It’s the softest leash.

Host:
The sound of the rain began, light but steady — a quiet percussion of regret. It filled the room with an intimacy that made the words heavier, as if even the night leaned in to listen.

Jack:
You make it sound hopeless. Like love can’t exist outside of structure.

Jeeny:
Not hopeless — just unexamined. Love can exist freely, but only once you strip it of its social armor.

Jack:
And what’s left then?

Jeeny:
Choice. Equality. Desire that doesn’t depend on pardon.

Jack:
(smiling faintly)
You sound like revolution wrapped in tenderness.

Jeeny:
Maybe that’s what feminism really is. Tenderness that refuses to beg for approval.

Jack:
So when a woman says, “I love you,” it’s still radical — if she says it on her own terms.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Love reclaimed from ideology.

Host:
The light flickered, briefly plunging them into near-darkness. When it returned, the air between them felt altered — quieter, but charged, as though they had just named something sacred and dangerous at once.

Jack:
You know, I never realized how much of love depends on permission.

Jeeny:
That’s because you’ve always had it.

Jack:
(sighing)
Yeah. I’ve always been allowed to want.

Jeeny:
While women were allowed only to respond.

Jack:
Or redeem.

Jeeny:
Exactly. Desire was your right; for us, it was our apology.

Jack:
(softly)
God.

Jeeny:
Don’t look so guilty. Awareness isn’t damnation. It’s just the start.

Jack:
The start of what?

Jeeny:
Relearning love. Without scripts. Without roles.

Jack:
Without manipulation.

Jeeny:
And without fear.

Host:
The rain grew louder, drumming steadily against the glass. The sound filled the pauses between their words — rhythmically, relentlessly — like a truth they couldn’t unhear.

Jack:
Do you think real love can survive awareness?

Jeeny:
It’s the only kind that can. The rest just survives repetition.

Jack:
And what does real love look like, then?

Jeeny:
It looks like two people who don’t need each other to be pure in order to be kind.

Jack:
That’s not romance.

Jeeny:
(smiling)
No. It’s freedom disguised as intimacy.

Jack:
And the movies told me that’s cold.

Jeeny:
That’s because the movies were written by men who mistook possession for poetry.

Jack:
(chuckling bitterly)
Ouch.

Jeeny:
(laughing softly)
You’ll recover. Most men do, once they realize they can love without conquest.

Jack:
(pausing)
And most women?

Jeeny:
They just learn they never needed pardon in the first place.

Host:
The window fogged over, blurring the city lights into trembling halos. Their reflections in the glass looked faint — almost ghostly — but the space between them glowed like something real, something alive.

Host:
And as the night deepened, Kate Millett’s words lingered — not as bitterness, but as revelation:

That what we call romantic love
is often the soft disguise of hierarchy —
a story that forgives women for desire
only if it’s wrapped in submission.

That men, knowingly or not,
learn to wield affection as permission,
and women, taught to equate approval with worth,
mistake validation for intimacy.

But beneath all that conditioning,
beneath centuries of scripts and surrender,
there remains something untamed —
a pulse of feeling that refuses to be owned,
a love that exists not as pardon,
but as power shared.

And maybe, just maybe,
the truest romance isn’t obedience or dependence,
but two people meeting each other
without hierarchy,
without ideology,
without apology —
simply as souls,
each free to say yes,
and equally free to say no.

The rain softened,
the fan slowed,
and as Jack reached for Jeeny’s hand —
not as claim,
but as recognition —
the night exhaled,
and the revolution whispered,
quietly,
through tenderness.