Beyond the Honeymoon: How Normativity Kills Human Encounters

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

We are repeatedly told that the first three months of a romantic relationship are the “honeymoon phase” — a period of blissful illusion, ease, and mutual idealization. But this narrative is not neutral. It is a deeply ideological construction, one that reflects the logic of a normative system that shapes how intimacy is expected to function under capitalist patriarchy.

In heteronormative relationships especially, the beginning of a romantic bond often mirrors the dynamics of rapid consumption. People present themselves as archetypes: the “cool girl,” the “provider,” the “dream partner.” These projections are not necessarily conscious manipulations; they are the internalized products of a system that teaches us to become desirable, simplified, and consumable. The ease of the first months is not a testament to compatibility — it is a performance fueled by shared illusions.

The so-called “crisis” that emerges after this phase — the decline, the friction, the confusion — is not the result of people changing, but rather of the mask slipping. It is the return of the human. And that human, complex and uncontainable, disrupts the archetype. The “honeymoon” collapses not because people grow apart, but because they finally begin to exist as subjects rather than products. The system cannot account for that kind of unruly authenticity, so it frames it as a failure.

We see this codified in mainstream advice, especially on platforms like TikTok: “Don’t give yourself to a man too soon, he’s playing a role,” “Wait three months, then show who you are.” These narratives assume that the man is a manipulative agent, and the woman a passive victim of his strategy. But this analysis misses the core issue: everyone is trapped in the performance. The man is not a cold strategist — he is often merely the embodiment of an empty archetype, trying to be what the system told him to be. He too is lost in the simulation.

The real radical act is not to delay intimacy or withhold presence, but to break from the script altogether. To refuse to appear as a consumable role. To insist on showing up, from the first moment, as a fully human subject: complex, intense, and evolving.

A truly human encounter is never “easy.” It should destabilize, awaken, demand depth. And it should not be measured by its durability, but by its transformative potential — how it moves us, sharpens us, echoes within our evolution. The fantasy of the “perfect partner” collapses under the weight of human reality. The antidote is not cynicism or abstinence — it is presence.

No one should be expected to perform a simplified version of themselves for the comfort of another. Connection is not about stability, but about coexisting in motion. If someone cannot meet us there — not because they are cruel, but because they are still shaped by archetypes — the rupture is not a failure. It is an act of liberation.

In a world of personas, opaqueness becomes resistance. In a culture of instant gratification, slowness becomes power. And in a system that demands our objectification, insisting on our full subjectivity is the most subversive thing we can do.