In the hit song “Some Enchanted Evening” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1949 musical “South Pacific,” which takes place during World War II, the French expatriate Emile sings of his love for Nellie, a young and naïve Navy nurse. The song is a general take on love and romance, of seeing a woman, a stranger, and hearing her laughter:

And night after night,
As strange as it seems,
The sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams. 

The song then asks:

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons—
Wise men never try. 

Over the last 50 years, an army of fools – feminists and their male sidekicks, academics, many psychologists, woke cultural critics, some misogynistic fringe conservatives – has dissected, deconstructed, and dismantled romantic love. From the 1970s slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” to the attack on fairy tale princesses and knights right up to our present day when so many men and women circle one another like wrestlers looking for a takedown, these gurus have sliced and diced, whopped and chopped romance so that it lies bleeding from a thousand cuts.

In his “The Tables Turned,” Wordsworth sings of the glories and lessons of nature. Here are the final two verses:

 Sweet is the lore which Nature brings:
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

Substitute romance for nature in that first line above, and this part of the poem encapsulates our destructive gender wars and offers a general outline for peace, which is to follow a receptive heart rather than the dark currents of our culture. To do otherwise is to join the ranks of the miserably disenchanted. Studies reveal that young women, particularly self-proclaimed liberals, and many young men are generally unhappy, in part because of fraught relationships with the opposite sex.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are three suggestions for the young – and for many of the old as well – that will help stave off the anti-romantic viruses of our culture and allow us to find adventure in matters of the heart.

The Romance of Fairy Tales

In his Dedication to his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” C.S. Lewis wrote, “some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”

Agreed. The wisdom in fairy tales, including romance, is valuable at all stages of life.

But even more, young people would do well not only to read fairy tales, but to live life as if it was such a tale, for it is, though many people fail to register that reality. There are wicked witches and dragons, both people and circumstances, along the path, and there is also romance, the knight who treats a serving maid like a lady, the princess who gives a pauper her heart.

Even when things turn out badly, as they sometimes will, life without a sense of romance is a dead end.

Ignore the Theories, Live the Reality

Our culture has become top-heavy with theories of gender and sex, often originating in academia, that would have roused hoots of mockery and disbelief just 70 years ago. Books are still written, and we still hear talk, about the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and the oppression of women, who now dominate many professions, hold all sorts of political offices, and outnumber their male counterparts in college and most graduate programs.

This politicization of gender and sex on both the left and the right have destroyed many relationships and created a canyon of mistrust among the young and single.

Whether you’re male or female, ignore this junk and love with your heart rather than with the propaganda the culture feeds you. If you’re a young woman of a progressive bent, and “some enchanted evening” you meet a man who unlocks your heart, and you then find out he’s a MAGA Republican, think twice before you dump him. Ask yourself if you really want a life where politics is your top priority, outranking even love itself.

Ditto for conservatives meeting liberals.

Stay Open to Possibilities

Don’t become one of those dreary cynics who, having suffered failure in romance and love, throw up walls and barbed wire around their emotions. Even worse, don’t become a misogynist or misandrist, lumping men or women together and despising them. Leave that ugly rhetoric to the disillusioned and the fanatics.

Look instead on men and women as individuals, not as some representative of their entire sex. Moreover, don’t objectify them, treating them as commodities. That’s not the way of love. One man I know, for example, always has a negative comment about any woman who’s even slightly overweight, meanwhile failing to discern the beauty of her eyes or the wit in her conversation.

Andrew Lloyd Webber once called “Some Enchanted Evening” the “greatest song ever written for a musical.” Bing Crosby, Barbara Streisand, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson are only a few of the many musicians who have recorded it.

There’s a reason for the song’s continuing fame and popularity.

It’s called romance.

This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image credit: Unsplash