Before We Had Dating Apps, "Before Sunset" Showed Us What Falling In Love Really Looked Like

It’s always struck me as intuitively true, and it captures the trilogy’s core thesis about love and connection. The films explore love over time, across two decades, each film’s events separated by nine years in real time and narrative. 

Before Sunrise captured their initial meet-cute on a train in 1994 and how an impulsive leap of faith to get off the train to explore Vienna with a total stranger changed the trajectory of their entire lives. Before Sunset picks up nine years later, when Jesse’s book tour to promote the novel he wrote about their chance encounter in Vienna one fateful night in 1994 takes him to a reading in Paris, where Céline stumbles into him. They reconnect, only for us to learn that Céline and Jesse never met up the year after their whirlwind romance, as they promised they would at the end of the first film, and Jesse is married to a woman he has a child with.

By the end of the film, their palpable, fiery connection is undeniable. Céline's last line of dialogue is “You are going to miss that plane,” insinuating they stay together this time. This is confirmed by the next installment, which picks back up in 2012 after they have been married for years and have children together. Céline is a stepmother to his child with Jesse’s previous wife. 

This film is the trilogy’s most unflinching in its realism—the dwindling spark that happens once the novelty of young romance has faded and you’ve borne the battle scars of marriage and parenthood. The trilogy tracks the slow evolution of their romance from honeymoon stage fantasy and infatuation to yearning for the love that got away (right person, wrong time) to a love that is no longer ambiguous in the will they-won’t they sense but ambiguous in a different sense: will they stand the test of time? Their love is now a test of endurance—a choice they continue to make. 

Was Céline Right?

That timeless quote from Céline regularly circulates on X for those limerence-afflicted lovesick puppies who may have loved and lost. They come to recognize how rare genuine connection is only after it’s too late. In response to Céline’s quote, @skooookum offers a less romantic rebuttal: “Entirely disagree. Connection is not rare. The sustained vigor and will to deliberately foster connection, to risk yourself in that necessary way, certainly is. Consequently, as your isolation increases, so does your romanticization of the past.”

That’s the crux of the debate: is connection inherently scarce, or does it just feel that way because we become guarded by our own emotional cowardice? Do we have a finite ability to love, or do we just run out of the courage and vulnerability to pursue it? We already know the harms of hookup culture. We’re bombarded with “body count” discourse incessantly on male dating podcasts meant to humiliate “loose” women. But what about the other end of the spectrum? Those who’ve earnestly loved to the fullest, only for it to be lost, again and again, through a revolving door of long-term relationships? Not people who’ve been undiscerning with their hearts, but perhaps too generous with them. People talk about being “ranthru” from too many one-night stands with random people, but can you become emotionally ‘ranthru’ from giving your heart away too freely and too often?

In contrast to Céline’s realism, we have the hopeless romantic archetype—someone who seems to have an unwavering belief in love. Taylor Swift seems to have fully embraced this hopeless romantic ideal of loving fast and hard, no matter the consequences. No matter how fragile or fleeting. Here today, gone tomorrow. But that also brings her a lot of pain—pain that’s processed through music. It’s incredibly cathartic as a means of making earnest art stained with the wounds of real experiences. But is this the same thing as what Céline and Jesse have, or is it an addiction to feeling loved?

Céline’s dialogue expresses bewilderment at such a temperament. “I always feel like a freak because I’m never able to move on like this. You know, people just have an affair or even entire relationships; they break up and they forget. They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals.” She also argues that people are irreplaceable. “I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with because each person had their own specific qualities; you can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost.”

Maybe some of us have an exceptional capacity to love like the first time over and over again without becoming spiritually damaged, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for most of us. A new study published in the scientific journal Social Psychological and Personality Science investigated how long it takes to get over an ex-partner. They found that on average, it took 4.18 years for the emotional attachment to become halfway dissolved, but for the typical person, it took a jarring eight years for the bond with an ex to fade away completely. For some, it took even longer.

Connection Has Always Been Rare, But Now It’s Elusive

In Before Sunset, Jesse reflects on how he tried to convince himself that the “who of it all” didn’t matter much. He tried to adopt a philosophy of romantic pragmatism, “Nobody is gonna be everything to you, and that ultimately it’s just a simple action of committing yourself, meeting your responsibilities that matter,” but he’s been suffering in silence ever since he got married, describing his life as “24/7 bad.” He recalls looking for Céline on his wedding day, hoping he’d run into her. Céline admits that she was fine until she read Jesse’s book. It confronted her with the realization that she felt like she put all her romanticism into that one night they had together and was never able to feel it again. “Like... somehow this night took this away from me and... I expressed them to you, and you took them with you! It made me feel cold, like if love wasn’t for me.”

Not only has no other man been able to live up to the emotional high of that night spent with Jesse in Vienna, but her heart has grown disillusioned, tired, and burnt out from failed relationships. “You know, it’s not even that I’ve been heartbroken... I’ve just become so... cynical. I think I’ve felt too much, and now I just feel nothing. It’s like I’ve overdosed on emotions.” A decade of failed relationships has left her exhausted and pessimistic.

It seems indisputable that what Jesse and Céline have is something special. We’re not just talking about mere connection but the connection—your person. Someone who gets you so deeply that they feel like a reflection of you. Their presence is like heroin. The words pouring out of their mouth feel like forbidden knowledge. It’s the kind of unmanufactured love that feels effortless, intuitive and predestined. Your banter is electric, the air around you feels charged, and you exist outside of time and space. That’s not your run-of-the-mill Tinder date.

Why is that? Well, you can’t scheme your way into that kind of connection. It can’t be optimized for, planned, or programmed. It’s a manifestation of two fully present souls experiencing the other. It arises from a perfect alignment of timing, openness, attraction, and mutual emotional frequency. This has always been an incredibly rare experience. There may be plenty of people with whom you’re compatible or “click” with. But do you “click” with them so palpably that their presence feels like magic? Like you’ve known them for thousands of years, and life is just one endless circle of time that sees your repeated re-integration of souls? 

Rage Against the Algorithm

That’s always required just the right conditions: the right place and right time, as well as all the other conditions that factor into a budding romance, like vulnerable vibes-matched curiosity about one another. That’s not something you can create at will, but modern culture has groomed us to believe that connection is infinite and endlessly available. Dating apps gamify the search for love. The looming presence of social media has hijacked our attention spans, so we’re never fully present enough to connect with someone sincerely, and we’re all convinced that love is like a bus stop. If you miss this one, just hitch the next ride. 

How often do you hear about dating app horror stories or the sterilization of compatibility-seeking via algorithms? We filter through humans like they’re product listings on Facebook Marketplace and dispose of them just as easily. The swiping interface of dating apps is designed to make us feel like we’re always just one swipe away from optimizing our best chance at finding a high-quality mate from a seemingly endless pool of matches. And it’s no wonder why this behavior is normalized. The apps seem like an obligatory dating tool in an era of hyper disconnection from our surroundings. 

When was the last time you went up to a stranger in public and just started conversing? Random meet-cutes of the sort in Before Sunrise are reaching near-extinction. Swiping becomes an end in itself, and you’re always holding back on the matches you do land. The paradox of choice creates decision paralysis, creating a romantic limbo in which most young people are currently stuck. When people meet off of the apps, they remain in their interpersonal cocoons, refusing to give up too much too early, lest this prove to be a poor return on investment. Everything about this method of courting feels contrived, and the complaint I hear the most about dates gone wrong via dating app match-ups is that their date felt like a soulless, detached opportunist. 

They lack manners, appreciation for their date’s thoughtfulness, curiosity about their thoughts about the world, and most notably, charisma. I’m convinced all modern romance problems are downstream from this charisma and vulnerability dry spell. I suspect it’s because charisma is downstream of presence, and no one is present anymore. Vulnerability is fostered through trust, and it’s harder to trust when it feels like we live in a perpetual surveillance state. The slightest slip of the tongue or awkward fumble can land you on a dating nightmares Reddit thread, where countless people you don’t even know will laugh at your expense.

That’s something the invention of the smartphone stole from us: that space between us that used to be a shared experience is now being hijacked by the cloud. It may seem like I’m listening, but I’m thinking about tweeting about this experience later. Everyone has been stuck in a mode of psychic multitasking since about 2008. Now, Tinder dates show up to the date like mindless, catatonic droids in the way they’d show up to a YouTube mukbang: passively watching, consuming, but not participating. It’s likely the culmination of treating dating like a marketplace to be gamed and the lobotomization of the masses through the consumption of passive content. We’re all sedated with entertainment and a list of options that present other human beings like menu items. 

Rather than an earnest, impassioned walk about Vienna and conversation that overflows like an endless river of thoughtful soliloquies, people are burdened by this sense that they should hold out for something better—conserve their energy and life force when they really need it. In a sense, it’s much more tragic than what Jesse and Céline experienced, because they never even had their day in Vienna that plagued them for years. They never had it all. Jesse and Céline may have been tortured by the memory of that day they spent together, but just knowing that it ever happened kept them going and believing in love. 

Before Midnight sees their relationship almost implode from years of building resentments and the fading of youthful romance. Céline even tells Jesse she doesn’t know if she loves him anymore. It’s only through roleplaying a time traveling bit that Jesse is able to reconnect with her. They can’t escape all the damage they’ve accumulated through their years, but they can choose to start over. “If you want love, then this is it. This is real life. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.” 

While Before Midnight takes on a different shape, it doesn’t dispute the heart of Before Sunset—that true connection is incredibly rare. It expands upon it by going deeper. Their love is no longer juvenile and idealized; it’s complicated, messy, painful, and beautiful. Linklater affirms, yes, connection like this is lightning in a bottle, but that alone doesn’t guarantee a happily ever after. Not only is true connection incredibly rare, but it stays rare even after you seize it, because genuine, unwavering intimacy sustained through a lifetime, despite a relationship’s fights, resentments, and relational fatigue, is even rarer than a brief magical encounter.

In Before Sunrise, Céline has this beautiful line, “I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me, but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know it’s almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.” And I think that’s the point. Finding “your person” might be difficult, but it’s worth attempting. And that’s a message more relevant than ever right now. 

Final Thoughts

True connection isn’t extinct, but it certainly feels that way for modern daters navigating the detached, algorithmically-determined dating field. It’s harder to break through the digital walls people have unwittingly built up. Connection requires courage, presence, risk, and a leap of faith—all qualities our tech-driven isolation discourages. Maybe connection feels so scarce not only because it’s naturally hard to come by, but we’ve also forgotten how to cultivate it.