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If you are like me, hanging out on dating apps (don’t ask), sooner or later the conversation, bio or tags come to vanilla. Mostly in the context of sex:

“Definitely not vanilla.”

Within this context, vanilla means conventional. Nothing particularly kinky, fetishistic or BDSM-ish. Mainstream. Whilst it does not necessarily mean it makes actors yawn, it can be judged, presented and mocked as boring. Old-fashioned. Conservative. And definitely too mainstream.

Regardless of whether you see vanilla as boring or not, one thing we can agree on is that vanilla seems to stand for not complex. Not particularly exciting. Not manifold. Not costly. This got me interested and made me stray away from my main dating goal: rather than meeting, I was now musing:

“How can a spice that is one of the most complex flavours on the planet have become a synonym for boring?”

Real vanilla is extraordinarily complex. A cured vanilla bean contains hundreds of naturally occurring aroma compounds. Vanilla is sweet and woody, smoky and creamy, warm and fruity, comforting and spicy, floral and  caramel-like.

Boring my foot.

So what gave vanilla such a bad rep? Part of it seems to be mass production. Synthetic vanilla made the flavour cheap, consistent and accessible. And then it was everywhere.

Every! Where!

Ice cream, dental floss, perfume, shampoo, candles, condoms – you name it – they make it. This convenient accessibility made something enormously complex, intriguing and expensive into something instantly recognisable and, well, boring!

Enter: Love

Just like vanilla, it has been commodified. We have sequenced love into universally applicable chunks neatly fitting into dating apps’ tick-boxes, digit limits, and tags. Love, like vanilla, being everywhere and could be diagnosed as having its very own vanilla complex:

It must:

• Be accessible without too high a cost in personal turmoil.
• Not be complicated in its existence.
• Be without opposing qualities.
• Be free of doubt.
• Be void of anger.
• Satisfy my need for total security.
• Surely arrive with fanfares and glory.
• Never ask us to take a leap into the unknown.

Proper love must be the dopamine ride, excitement, sex on demand…

In other words: predictably smooth, instantly recognisable and readily available. On dating apps, people ask for excitement without uncertainty. Attachment without vulnerability. Togetherness without disturbance.

We really are bad with complexity.

Love holds all sorts of experiences, those we like and those we feel uncomfortable with:

• I can love you and be angry with you.
• I can love you and doubt.
• I can want you very badly and want me-time.
• I can feel safe with you and be frightened by how much you matter to me.
• I can choose you without becoming a person who never again wonders about her choices.

Just like real vanilla, love is expensive. We pay by exposing our vulnerability. Maybe this is why so many of us avoid vanilla, in love as well as in lovemaking.