I would say yes,
that love continues to be a privileged substitute for the non-relation.
I respond to Christiane Alberti's question during the "Evening of the WAP" at the opening of the work towards the Congress "There is no sexual relation."
To be loved.
Perhaps more than to love.
Which complicates the metaphor of love…
But love—even in times of the Ones all alone—is the theme that insists most on analysands.
With unique features in the age of social media frenzy.
"He reacted to me," referring to the emoji received in a story.
"He didn't even look at me."
"He looked at me"… at my story.
He loves me, a lot, a little, not at all…
The hope that the last petal will reveal whether the love is reciprocated.

Is the desire to be in a relationship still relevant today?
I answer with Envidiosa [Envious],
an Argentine series.
It was a hit.
In its first week on air, it reached more than 2.3 million views.
It ranked among the five most-watched series on Netflix.
Vicky is the protagonist.
A woman in her late 30s, in crisis after a breakup.
Her lifelong partner leaves her.
And he leaves her after she gives him an ultimatum.
Vicky tells him, "Either we get married or we break up."
No open relationship, no polyamory,
just a demand for marriage.
Unequivocal proof of love?

It is striking that, in times of polyamory, open relationships, and liquid love, Envidiosa is
the series that has been most talked about in therapy sessions, an object of identification; as one patient said, "I am Vicky."
A story that reunites us with the classic pains of love.
Short circuits and misunderstandings.
Finally, "he loves me a lot, a little, not at all."
Vicky wants to find a partner.
Her friends have husbands, children, money…
Vicky goes to the analyst and complains that she doesn't have what the others have in abundance.
I wonder: if love comes to replace the sexual non-relation, can we say that the couple is [the] equivalent in that replacement?
Is being in a couple a substitute for love?
Éric Zuliani argues that, in Freud's post-Victorian era, tradition and prohibitions were what made sexual relations exist, what Freud called "civilized sexual morality," the core of which was marriage.
And here he proposes a reflection: perhaps we need to distinguish between making sexual relationships exist and substituting sexual relations.
I think that the contemporary consumption of partners, that is to say, objects disguised as one gender or another, [which] are quickly discarded because there are so many options on the app that tempt the consumer to new experiences.
They come rather to bring the sexual relation into existence, without dividing themselves, without going through castration.
The open couple, which is not the same as polyamory, has as its condition that love remains outside, that the subject manages to remain shielded from affection. And if it happens… it's a catastrophe, the contract is broken.
Let's remember "Kant with Sade," where Lacan states how the society of the contract pushes towards the cynicism of jouissance.
The need to shield ourselves from our emotions also involves the bond between love and curiosity, which involves the desire to know more about the other person.
Nothing is closer to love than curiosity.
But today it has a name: "toxic."
"Toxic couples."
Today's social networks offer a spectacularly easy way to stalk the person you are interested in, the person who keeps you awake at night, your beloved…
But the stalker is denounced as toxic.
On the one hand, we find the trivialization of love,
"I love you," "I love you," …hearts in a rainbow of colours,
sent to everyone…
But… paradoxically, when the encounter between A and B finally takes place, don't let it show… that I miss you, that you made something happen in my body, that I succumbed to the shame of looking at you.
"That is to say, the unbearable effect of the correlative feminisation of love."¹
Dating apps encourage more encounters.
With the illusion that one could choose more effectively with whom to form a couple.
But it fails.
The couple is not programmable.
There is always a great mystery surrounding the choice of a partner.
Even when the interested party draws up a list of attributes that their ideal partner should have.
None of that works, because we have no idea that perhaps it was just the shine on the nose, Mme Bovary's bun, riding a horse dressed as a man, Beatrice's gaze, or the girl crouching down scrubbing the floor.
"For here there is nothing but encounter, the encounter in the partner of symptoms and affects, of everything that marks in each of us the trace of his exile – not as subject but as speaking – his exile from the sexual relationship."²
To put it plainly, it is jouissance that chooses.

^[1] Miller, J.-A., "We Love the One Who Responds to Our Question: Who Am I?," trans. A.R. Price, NLS Messager, available online: cengizerdem.com.
^[2] Lacan, J., (1972-1973) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX, Encore, trans. B. Fink, New York & London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1999, p. 145.