Romanticon

Fall in love

Love needs a resurgence. We have spent the last year finding out what is associated with falling in love and with maintaining that love, in order to design a conference that brings romantics together in true love, for life.

Mission: Attendees find a lifelong, passionate, loving relationship, either among each other or shortly after Romanticon, because they have become knowledgeable, revitalized, and evidently loving and lovable.

Meet other deep lovers looking for something serious:
  • Bi-genger conference where every attendee is seeking a lifelong, loving relationship. We expect about 500 attendees and will be controlling ticket sales and waitlisting to ensure an even gender split.
  • Searchable app which will make finding and contacting each other easy.
  • Schedule dates with each other during and after the conference.
  • See also “Approach dating in a love-focused way”
Experience Love-focused Culture, no distrust or embarrassment:
  • Establish common romantic values: Opening talk and marketing messaging create common ground. It is clear that having an open heart is not cringe or out of place here. (If you think it’s cringe, don’t come!)
  • Vetted Attendees: Attendees will all be vetted with a 10 minute interview to be sure they match the vibe and intention, so you can trust everyone you meet is a deep lover like you.
  • Establish common knowledge that love can last:
    • Our culture is jaded about love. But did you know that ~30% of couples who have been married 10 years or longer describe themselves as still “very much in love”?
    • We will ensure that everyone has faith in love, not just you, by:
    • Talk 1: Establishing the truth about love, like what it is and the research associated with it lasting
    • Talk 2: Refuting myths, like that passion and love has to fade, blackpill and incel narratives, gender discourse
Learn Skills for lasting romantic love and attraction so your next relationship lasts and only gets better and better.
  • For some reason most of the relationship literature which has spread far and wide is just about avoiding divorce or navigating difficulty. We want to help you have a wonderful relationship, not just avoid divorce and weather the bad stuff!
  • There is research and philosophy on lasting love and attraction, but it is filled with jargon like positive illusion, capitalization, self-expansion, differentiation, global adoration, crystallization, anima/animus, etc. After a lot of reading and implementing it in our own lives, we found this all boils down to 3 trainable meta-skills. These heuristics are all you need. Romanticon will focus on:
Going Into the Unknown
  • Bravery, Daringness, Vulnerability, Mystery, Ambiguity, Actuation
  • Talks and Workshops: Actuation and being compelled, Types of Bravery (faith and daringness), Becoming Comfortable with Mystery, Paradox, and Ambiguity, Vulnerability in conversations (roleplay what you could have said in last relationship), Learn a new instrument, Giving Up Control
Attuning to Beauty
  • The feeling one gets when taking in beauty is very much like the feeling of love. The noticing of beauty is very much like the noticing of what is wonderful about your beloved.
  • Talks and Workshops: Feeling beauty in our bodies, Photography workshop, why is beauty important, change social media diet, Noticing Virtues
Meaning-Making
  • We will have talks on how meaning-making and storytelling are related to love and attraction.
  • Talks and Workshops: positive self-talk and self esteem for accepting love, learn poetry, write a love letter, thinking in allegory, using imagination, write your narrative, Myth and Ritual
Learn to boost Desire in yourself and others:
  • Yearning comes from the 3 meta-skills above and addressing your blocks.
  • Talks and Workshops: love and pleasurable yearning, addressing blocks to desire, noticing the desire/yearning which already exists, composing romantic moments, making your virtues evident, Desire is good (don’t be buddhist-cucked)
Find your Beloved
  • Romantic love is still personal and specific. So you need to figure out: What kind of person could you keep falling in love with more and more every day? What type of person would fall in love with you? What makes you imminently lovable? And now, what do you DO to find your beloved with this in mind?
  • Talks and workshops: Pt1: What is love, Pt 2: Find your must-haves and must-nots to fall in love, Pt 3: Understanding your virtues and making them evident, Pt 4: Finding your Beloved (update profiles, use conference app, compose and send asks to friends, put ask on website).
Feel your soul:
  • Talks and Workshops: Jungian Alchemy
Extra Features:
  • Coaches in residence if you are struggling with a step in a workshop
  • Sunday Party
  • Optional with upgrade:
    • Help writing your app profile
    • Matchmaking

FAQ:

Is this a monogamy-only conference?
  • This conference is to help people who want to choose and be chosen. All applicants should be at least open to the possibility of a monogamish relationship, because we expect most attendees will be monogamous or monogamish.
  • However, you will be able to say what relationship styles you are open to, and sort by those. So if you are “ambiamorous” (like ambidextrous, you could be happy with either mono or poly), you could try to find someone else who is also open to poly.
  • Do not apply if you are: poly-only, solo poly, relationship anarchist, already have a primary partner, just looking for hookups, or are not ready for a life-long relationship.
Is this for straight and bi people only?
  • Our venue has limited capacity, and we are trying to establish as large a pool as we can of people who are compatible, at least in the most basic ways like sexual orientation. That means we want to prioritize attendees who are attracted to the opposite gender.
  • However, we will be holding at least one queer mixer for the bi and queer attendees.
  • If this event goes well, we’d love to hold lesbian or gay Romanticons!

Team: