Abstract

Love and intimate relations are becoming more complex, delicate and unsure in the contemporary literature. This essay explores the way the subject of love is depicted in the current society, which is psychologically sick due to the general anxiety, isolation and failed relationships. The given work makes use of the works by contemporary writers, such as Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro, to examine how the characters cope with love but have to address the issues of mental illness, social norms, and technology. A qualitative textual discussion is employed to examine how these books mirror and condemn real life concerns, particularly those that must pertain to being solitary, emotionally aloof and scared of devotion. The paper compares the Freudian and philosophical theories primarily works by Freud, Lacan, Sartre and Kierkegaard to demonstrate how love, which was once regarded as a source of comfort has now turned into a place of battle. In this work, it is possible to see that the contemporary writing does not only display the way intimate relations are frail in a disorienting world, but it also challenges the very nature of human bonding. This paper has demonstrated how the anxieties of the 21 st century have transformed love relationships functioning in fiction by examining character development, story structure, symbolic language, and academic theories.