Dear twenty-somethings, who take up crochet or watercolour painting to avoid falling in love: tell us all about life

For ten years they’ve been trying to make love as the ultimate obsession go out of fashion, and now they’re succeeding, so the first review from GG, Giovane Generazione, is: well done! The New York Times reports on the emergence of “hobbyamory”, the trend amongst single people to invest time and money in hobbies and friendships rather than in the search for a relationship. Pottery as an alternative source of fulfilment to romantic love. The phenomenon is closely linked to ‘hobbymaxxing’ and ‘side quests’: on TikTok, in 2026, (American) posts tagged #hobbies rose by almost 15 per cent, those tagged #grandmahobbies by over 400 per cent, and those dedicated to ‘side quests’ by over 210 per cent. In short, the emotional caution of the 1920s has evolved into: always having something to do. Well then. Ovid himself wrote in "Remedia Amoris": overcome boredom, give your hands something to do, and you will break Cupid’s bow. But that came afterwards, not before – it was a cure, not a preventative measure.

Climbing, watercolours, a course on frying anchovies – all to ensure not a single gap remains for that murderous woodworm, love, the usurper of everyone’s existence. Twenty-somethings, after facing various accusations (they don’t want to work, they don’t want to buy a house or a car, they don’t want children and they don’t even like wine), are now confronting the unthinkable: they don’t want to fall in love. We’ve got other sources of happiness, thank you very much. It would be the greatest anthropological achievement of all time: choosing no one. The interesting point is the attempt to put things into perspective: does love have to be the main plotline? No, not necessarily. I agree, I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, they glimpse a conclusion as adults with their bones already broken: that when you’re in love, you bring out the worst in yourself, but you don’t know it; you can’t realise it. What love is, one should never ask of those newly in love, but of relentless, practical souls with children to support and twenty years of marriage behind them. Love is the answer to the question ‘But how can I bear it? Why don’t I just leave?’. Barthes invented a ‘Loving Subject’ specifically to show us the farce of romance. He is an indistinct, at times ridiculous protagonist who wanders through the pages of the book "Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse". We follow him the whole time as he fails spectacularly at living: episode after episode, he strives wholeheartedly to define himself as a comical, pitiable individual. ‘Comical’ is just my word for it; the truth is that he really is suffering. But he suffers over nothing. I simply cannot shake the feeling that Barthes wanted precisely that – the unintentional caricature of this poor wretch, the ‘Loving Subject’, that ultimately sticks in your mind. We have all been the ‘Loving Subject’; we were a Marcovaldo lost in the fog, chirping, ‘Why don’t you love me? Love me, please! I’ll pay you!’ What is it that makes a person in love seem ridiculous, just like the ‘imaginary invalids’?

a) The lover cannot stand the rest of the world. There is an inescapable desire for possession at the heart of the whole affair. Love is not a generous sentiment; it is not about giving, but about wanting to possess; it is therefore inseparable from its object and does not tolerate being shared. “The world is full of intrusive neighbours with whom I am forced to share the other person. The world is precisely this: an obligation to share. The world is my rival. The lover even goes so far as to be jealous of a book in which the other person is engrossed.”

b) The lover lives (unhappily) in fear. “Depending on the circumstances, the Loving Subject feels driven by the fear of danger, of being hurt, of being abandoned. But ultimately, the anguish of love is the fear of a loss that has already taken place, right at the beginning, when I was bewitched. Someone ought to be able to tell me, ‘Do not be anguished any longer; you have already lost them’.”

c) The lover has but one occupation: waiting. They wait for a message, then a phone call, then an invitation to dinner, then for that dinner invitation to come to fruition. They wait to see their beloved again, wait for the relationship to stabilise, wait to feel secure. They start to expect to be betrayed, end up betrayed, wait for things to sort themselves out, wait for it to blow over, wait to fall in love again. Want to put a man through hell? Make him wait. “Waiting is a spell: I have been ordered not to move. The wait for a phone call thus becomes interwoven with a web of minor prohibitions, endlessly, to the point of shame: I forbid myself from leaving the room, from going to the loo, even from making a phone call (so as not to keep the line busy). The anguish of waiting demands that I sit in an armchair with the telephone within reach, doing nothing. Making people wait: a constant prerogative of any power, ‘humanity’s age-old pastime’.”

Theme: Love, anguish, expectations. And how do you resolve it? Is there a way to heal? Can you become invulnerable by doing crochet? Colleagues, demonstrate your approach – though I fear that even if you attempt to escape love while wearing Perseus’ sandals, it will catch up with you sooner or later.