On detachment, feminism, and the quiet fear of wanting something real.

On campus, it has become easy to mock love.

You hear it in passing comments. Someone walks by holding hands, and the reaction is immediate. 

“That could never be me.” 

“I would be so embarrassed.” 

“Couldn’t imagine caring that much.”

The tone is joking, and the distance feels intentional.

Somewhere along the way, wanting love started to sound weak. Not heartbreak. Not betrayal. Just the simple act of wanting to be chosen. To be known. To belong to someone and let them belong to you.

This shift is subtle but constant. In dating culture, emotional clarity can be labeled as “too much.” Expressing interest becomes “coming on strong.” Defining a relationship feels riskier than drifting in ambiguity. It is safer to keep things undefined than to admit you care.

But what are we protecting ourselves from?

A recent wave of social media commentary declared that having a boyfriend is embarrassing. The joke spread quickly. Independence became control and power. Needing no one became the ideal.

Yet, independence and intimacy are not opposites.

This is where bell hooks, a feminist author, offers a necessary correction. In All About Love: New Visions, she writes, “We yearn to love and be loved, but we are afraid of love.” That fear is not accidental. We live in a culture that rewards emotional self-sufficiency. To care deeply is to risk looking foolish. To admit desire is to risk rejection.

As a feminist thinker, hooks rejected the idea that women should feel shame for wanting partnership. She challenged patriarchal models of love that depend on domination or self-erasure. But she never argued that the solution was detachment. For hooks, love is an act of will. It requires courage. Desiring love does not make someone regressive—it makes them human.

At Boston College, this tension is on full display. Situationship culture thrives on ambiguity: conversations are measured, texts are analyzed, and feelings are filtered. Many students want stability, but few want to appear as though they want it.

The fear is not just romantic. It extends to friendship. Students hesitate before saying “I care about you.” They worry about being clingy. They downplay attachment to not appear dependent.

But love in any form requires risk, and therefore, courage.

In my dorm lobby, there has been a box of chocolate-covered strawberries sitting on the table for days. There’s a name, but no note. No explanation. I emailed the person to see if someone was missing them. No response.

Maybe they were delivered to the wrong place. Maybe the person they were meant for did not want them. Maybe someone felt too embarrassed to claim them.

Now the strawberries are starting to shrivel. The chocolate has dulled. What was once bright and glossy is slowly collapsing in on itself.

It feels like a small metaphor for how we sometimes treat love here. Something offered with intention sits untouched because claiming it feels vulnerable. We hesitate. We overthink. We decide it is safer to let it spoil than to risk reaching for it.

Love, like fruit, does not stay fresh without connection. It is meant to be shared. Left alone, it hardens. It wrinkles. It disappears.

“The practice of love offers no place of safety,” hooks writes. That sentence explains much of our campus cynicism. If love offers no safety, then irony feels like armor. Our jokes create distance, and distance creates protection.

The problem is that protection also creates isolation.

When we treat caring as embarrassing, we shrink our capacity for connection. We convince ourselves that emotional restraint equals maturity. 

Yet the moments that feel most grounding are rarely the detached ones. They are the ones when someone shows up. When someone chooses you. When you feel known without performance.

When with someone I love, whether a partner or a close friend, life feels shinier. The world does not change, but it feels brighter. Its rough edges soften until I feel more like myself.

There is nothing anti-feminist about wanting intimacy. True feminism insists on agency, so choosing love freely should be considered a strength, not a weakness.

The cultural script that frames love as embarrassing does not protect us from harm. It protects us from vulnerability, which is not the same.

Of course, caution is wise. Not every relationship is healthy. Love requires respect and accountability, but rejecting the desire for love altogether does not make us stronger—it makes us lonelier.

Maybe the discomfort we feel when we see open affection has less to do with them and more to do with us. Maybe it surfaces the part of us that still hopes for something steady. Something mutual. Something honest.

We do not have to mock what we secretly want.

Love is not cringe. It is not embarrassing. It is not a distraction from independence.

It is a practice of courage.

And perhaps the bravest thing we could admit on this campus is that we still want it.