In previous posts, I’ve written a little about my experiences dating post-divorce. Overall, my experiences were very positive, I met some amazing people. With some I connected, with others I didn’t.
I started thinking about dating and my past relationships because of a socio-economic term I had been reading about: Hypernormalization. It was coined by Russian scholar Alexei Yurchak in his 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. He used it to describe the final decades of the Soviet Union, when everyone knew the official ideology didn’t reflect reality but continued to go along with it anyway. The result: people lived in a “fake” or simulated version of normality, where political and social life was sustained by rituals and narratives no one fully believed, yet everyone acted as if they did.
This idea of normalization has become more well known in recent years, mainly due to the massive rise in inflation and the overall cost of living, leading some to wonder if we’re heading toward late-stage capitalism. Or the idea that we’re already in it.
Filmmaker Adam Curtis popularized the concept in his 2016 documentary HyperNormalisation. He applied the term to modern societies and made a few observations:
- Governments, corporations, and media create simplified, distorted versions of reality that are easier to manage and control.
- People, overwhelmed by complexity, accept these versions of reality because they feel they can’t change them.
- This leads to a condition where the “fake” becomes indistinguishable from the “real,” and society collectively sustains it.
For the Soviet Union, communism was all people knew. They couldn’t imagine anything different; they just had to go along with the system until it finally collapsed. In modern Western societies, capitalism is all we’ve known. The idea that with enough hard work, anyone can have the life they want, and that children will be better off than their parents. Our brains want to cling to what’s familiar instead of seeing what is truly happening around us.
We all bring baggage into our relationships. This is even more true as we get older. We’ve had numerous past relationships; we might have children, or trauma from difficulties in our past. All of these experiences colour how we expect to be treated in a romantic relationship.
In one of my early relationships after my divorce, I was with someone who was often verbally abusive. Just like with nations falling into collapse, my relationship started out in a good place. The abuse crept in, first slowly, then becoming a normal part of my life. I couldn’t recognize what was happening or why I felt so terrible all the time. It wasn’t until I started confiding in a close friend that the fog began to lift. I realized that how I was being treated wasn’t normal and that I deserved better.
Having a strong support system can help you see through the fog. When you can’t advocate for yourself, you need others who care about you to step up. It’s far too easy for poor treatment to become normalized over time. Make sure you have people in your corner who will help advocate for you when the time comes. They’ll help you see through the fog and remind you of your worth. At the end of the day, we all need people who reflect back the truth when we can’t see it ourselves and who encourage us to step out of what we perceive to be normal and into something we truly deserve.