Maybe Romanticising Your Life Is Actually a Good Idea

A letter from the Host

The internet has encouraged us to do many questionable things. Drinking chlorophyll comes to mind. So does putting castor oil on absolutely everything, waking up at 5am because somebody with a very beige kitchen said it changed her life, and convincing ourselves that a £42 candle is an essential part of nervous system regulation.

But I think it may finally have given us something worth keeping: romanticising our lives.

At first glance, it sounds faintly ridiculous. Like something you do if you own six linen dresses, live near a flower market and have somehow found a way to make buying oat milk look cinematic. But I don’t think that is really what people mean by it anymore. I think it is less about pretending your life is more beautiful than it is, and more about actually noticing the parts of it that already are.

The good coffee in the nice cup. Buying the flowers even though nobody is coming over. Taking the longer route home because the weather is lovely. Putting music on while you cook. Wearing the perfume you normally save for dinner. Sitting down in the café instead of carrying your coffee away while answering messages with one hand.

None of these things changes your life, and perhaps that is exactly why I like them. We are very used to the idea that if something is worth doing, it should lead somewhere. The walk should improve our step count. The bath should help us sleep. The journal should make us more self-aware. The morning routine should increase productivity. Even doing absolutely nothing somehow ended up with a measurable benefit attached to it.

So there is something quite rebellious about doing something simply because it makes an ordinary Tuesday feel nicer. No outcome. No transformation. No before and after. Just nicer.

I also think women are particularly good at creating lovely experiences for other people. Someone is coming for dinner and suddenly the candle is lit. A friend is staying over and the good towels appear. We buy flowers before people arrive. We put the nice glasses on the table. We think about what everyone likes to eat, whether they will be cold, what time they will get here, whether they need directions, whether they have somewhere comfortable to sit.

We create atmosphere. We anticipate. We make things feel special for them.

And then on the nights when it is just us, somehow dinner gets eaten standing at the kitchen counter while scrolling through emails. Which feels a little unfair, really.

Maybe romanticising your life is simply taking some of that hospitality and turning it inward. What if, every now and then, you prepared your own life as though somebody you really liked was coming over?

Not in an elaborate way. I don’t mean laying a table for one with twelve pieces of cutlery and a handwritten place card. I mean noticing yourself enough to think, I’d like that.

The nice glass. The proper coffee. The fresh sheets. The ten minutes sitting somewhere lovely instead of rushing straight home. The coat you love even though you are only going to the supermarket. The expensive hand cream you keep “for best”, as though your hands are currently on probation.

There is something slightly absurd about how many beautiful things we save. The good candle. The nice notebook. The silk pyjamas. The bottle of wine somebody brought over. The bath oil that apparently needs an occasion. We behave as though there will eventually be a sufficiently glamorous Wednesday that finally deserves all of it.

Meanwhile, life is happening on all the ordinary ones.

And I think that may be what romanticising your life gets right. It reminds you that you are actually in it. Not waiting for the weekend. Not waiting until work calms down. Not waiting until the house is sorted, the children are older, the relationship arrives, the body changes, the money feels comfortable, or you finally become the woman who has her life so together that she stores lentils in matching glass jars.

Now. This slightly messy, slightly tired, very normal version of now.

There are already things worth enjoying in it.

Perhaps buying yourself the flowers is not frivolous. Perhaps using the good glass on a Wednesday is not ridiculous. Perhaps taking twenty minutes to sit somewhere lovely when you could technically be “getting things done” is not a failure of efficiency. Perhaps it is just evidence that you remembered you were here too.

And maybe that is why this particular internet trend has lasted. Because underneath the pretty coffees and candlelit kitchens, there is something quite sensible about it.

A life does not become meaningful only when something significant happens. Most of it is ordinary. Most of it is Tuesday mornings, school runs, emails, laundry, supermarket queues, cups of tea, quick dinners and wondering where you left your phone while holding your phone.

So perhaps the trick is not constantly trying to escape the ordinary. Perhaps it is learning to make a little more of it feel like yours.

Light the candle. Use the good cup. Buy the flowers. Make the thing you were saving for somebody else. I don’t mean you have to spend lots of money, I mean something much more simple.

Not because any of it will change your life, but you work hard so surely deserve that? It is your life after all.

And that feels like reason enough.