Love means accepting no exceptions

TIME was TV dating shows were rather age-specific. Cilla Black might have done an elderly people novelty special on Blind Date (cue a collective misty-eyed ‘Ahhhh’), but romance was something deemed to be for the young, the conventionally attractive, the straight, the “normal” — whatever “normal” is.

What TV dating shows now tell us is that we slowly accept that romance is not something for a unique club or a select few. Romantic love is for everyone.

The broadening of the TV love spectrum was partially driven by a need to update an old format and partially to adhere to a more politically correct diversity agenda. As a result the shows regularly deal with all orientations, ages, races and needs.

And though the motivation for the change wasn’t entirely organic, what the broadened spectrum of love targets and objects reveals time and again, is just how important love is to everyone.

We are most of us lucky to be loved by family and friends, human and furry. But romantic love, no matter how high minded we wish it to be, is differentiated by the delicious piquancy of that most basic thing — lust. That was the part we have always struggled to accept for anyone but the young, lovely and ‘normal’.

Anyone else could seek companionship and connection, that was fine, but the thought they might have anything earthier on their minds was not fine at all. Indeed it was anything from repellent to immoral.

But we’re coming round, we’re starting to not only see but to embrace that romantic love, one of humanity’s greatest gifts, is for everyone — and that what love means is accepting no exceptions.