Modern dating is a lot. At any given moment you’re juggling three apps, ghosting someone you forgot you matched with, and watching a stranger cry on TikTok about a breakup you now feel emotionally invested in. It’s exhausting.
So yeah, it’s tempting to romanticize the past. Back when people wrote long, tragic love letters, died of consumption, or just stood around in oil paintings looking emotionally wrecked. At least then, the heartbreak felt dramatic instead of algorithmic.
These classical art memes get it. Relationships have always been messy—we just used to do it in corsets and Latin.