Is Long-Term Love A Luxury Now?

There’s a specific kind of burn that comes with modern dating.

Most relationships don’t last past the honeymoon phase; there’s an expiry date looming over everyone’s heads (see: Black Mirror’s “Hang The DJ” episode). When and will I ever find “the one”? And you don’t just want this “one” to love you. You want them to see all of you and stay anyway. You want them to be loyal, be liked by your parents, to “yearn,” to be funny, to be a provider, to add value to your life, and to let you have your own life all at the same time. Each person’s list is different, but once you find someone who can actually fulfill it, they start to feel like a luxury item worth an invaluable amount.

And we know luxuries are not accessible to everyone. It’s not just about finding and “affording” this luxury, it’s also about taking care of it and creating a beautiful life with your person.

Netflix’s Nobody Wants This captures that process. According to its Wikipedia page, the show centers on the relationship between Joanne Williams, an outspoken, agnostic sex-and-dating podcaster (Kristen Bell), and Noah Roklov, a rabbi (Adam Brody), as they try to make an interfaith relationship work amid nosy families and clashing expectations.

Season 1 handled the meet-cute while Season 2, which dropped on Netflix in October 2025, tells a whole different narrative. Instead of asking “Will they or won’t they?” it asks, “Now that they did, how do they actually keep this going?” It leans into the unglamorous and more familiar parts of dating: the slow, clumsy work of staying in a long-term relationship while still holding onto your individuality.

Joanne and Noah’s relationship has to survive awkward Jewish holidays, opinions from both families, and the looming question of Joanne’s conversion, which hovers over almost every conversation. Joanne’s entire brand is independence and emotional oversharing on a podcast, while Noah’s job is literally to protect and interpret a tradition thousands of years old. Watching them try to merge their lives is like watching two different operating systems glitch their way through a forced software update. There are compatibility issues everywhere, but neither of them wants to uninstall the other.

Season 2 is at its best when it uses humor to get at something honest about being in love. There’s a Valentine’s Day episode where Noah goes full “perfect boyfriend” with flowers, a fancy necklace, and a bubble bath. It’s romantic in theory, but weird because he’s done the same thing for all his exes. Joanne ends up showing him that what really matters is the unsexy stuff, like noticing she doesn’t have a bedside table and quietly buying one. To be loved is to be seen. According to Netflix's Tudum site, the writers use that episode to show that real romance comes from paying attention, not from repeating a script.

The show clearly understands the way our generation dates. We joke about red flags, send TikToks about “situationships,” and talk a big game about boundaries, but deep down, most of us still want that one person who chooses us on purpose. The banter between Joanne and Noah is sharp and fast, but it’s the smaller, quieter moments that land hardest: misreading each other’s silences, a joke slipping into a real argument, or the shared panic when the relationship stops being hypothetical and starts getting real.

The question I had after watching this season is whether long-term love has become a kind of emotional luxury—something you can only “afford” if you’re willing to bend parts of yourself. Joanne spends the entire season wrestling with what converting would actually mean. Noah, meanwhile, has to figure out how far he can stretch his Jewish faith without betraying something essential to who he is to be with her. 

What stuck with me is how the show handles their growth. By the end of the season, it’s less about who’s right and more about how they fight. They start to embody this idea that it’s not “Noah vs. Joanne,” but “Joanne and Noah vs. the problem.” They still mess up, still hurt each other, but there’s a clear shift toward seeing themselves as being on the same team. That’s where the “luxury” feeling comes in—not the fancy date nights, but the emotional safety of knowing someone is choosing you and choosing to work through the hard stuff with you.

Watching them navigate their conflicts made me more aware of the tiny moments in my own relationship that feel like small luxuries, and I’m more grateful that I get to experience them every day. The show doesn’t pretend that love is this magical, effortless thing. Instead, it suggests that long-term love is a kind of luxury, but not in the exclusive, material way we usually think about it. It’s a luxury because it demands emotional investment—honesty, patience, and the willingness to be seen in ways that aren’t always flattering. And I’m glad I have someone who stands beside me while we work through all the problems thrown at us. 

In a culture where almost everything feels disposable, Nobody Wants This quietly insists that choosing one person, over and over again, is still one of the most meaningful—and yes, luxurious—things we can do.