What Jane Austen’s original “delulu girl” can teach us about romance, reality, and vocation
The women of Gen Z have once again done a service to society by giving us (among many other useful terms, like “pick-me girl,” “theatre kid,” and “Disney adult”) the word “delulu.” A humorous abbreviation of “delusional,” it captures a specific kind of female romantic derangement—especially that which emerges wherever men, mixed signals, and wishful thinking converge. Millennials had the phrase “He’s just not that into you,” the title of a 2004 book and 2009 movie. But Gen Z has the catchier, more brutal diagnosis: “delulu.”
This week, audiences will get reacquainted with one of literature’s most iconic delulu girls in a new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1811 classic, Sense and Sensibility. In her debut novel, Austen compares two sisters with two radically different ways of navigating love: the restrained, prudent Elinor Dashwood and the romantic, impulsive Marianne. The 2026 version, directed by Georgia Oakley, stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor and Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne, and arrives in theaters October 16.
In anticipation of the new adaptation, it’s worth revisiting Austen’s treatment of romantic self-deception and considering it alongside Gen Z’s delulu-girl archetype. Dating advice is having something of a renaissance, and much of it—from the rising (and surprising) popularity of Laura Doyle to Arthur Brooks’s recent prescriptions for finding a spouse—is surprisingly reasonable and relevant (especially for Catholics, who should be approaching the concept of vocation seriously). With that in mind, Austen’s original delulu girl offers a useful test case for how much we’ve learned about the difference between romantic hope and wishful fantasy in the 215 years since the book came out.
Without getting too deeply into spoilers, Marianne’s problems begin when she falls headlong for the charming John Willoughby (much like Lydia Bennet for George Wickham in Austen’s most famous book, Pride and Prejudice) and allows the intensity of the attachment (what modern audiences would call a “situationship”) to cloud her thinking. Their chemistry is obvious, and the understanding between the two seems complete. After all, Marianne is receiving all the signals—the brooding eye contact, the clandestine excursions, the obsequious appeals to her mother—except the one that would actually indicate commitment by her generation’s standards: a proposal. Instead, much like Wickham, Willoughby starts to seem like what Gen Z would call a “walking red flag.” In other words, what Willoughby leads Marianne to believe about their dynamic begins to outrun what he is actually promising her, or what the material evidence of his intentions is revealing.
Becoming fixated on someone who is not committing risks potentially missing legitimate opportunities altogether.
Kate Winslet captures the resulting devastation magnificently in Ang Lee’s 1995 adaptation—and we’ll soon see if Creed-Miles can equally deliver. When Marianne is finally forced to acknowledge the gap between the romance she believed herself to be living and the reality of Willoughby’s intentions—to acknowledge, in contemporary parlance, that she’s been “breadcrumbed”—her grief is all-consuming. Winslet’s reaction is so complete—so bodily and operatic—that the effect is simultaneously heartbreaking and, in the way romantic catastrophes can be only when viewed from the outside, a little tragically, guiltily hilarious. (Anyone who has ever watched a delulu friend insist that the mixed signals she is receiving in a situationship are actually perfectly clear—and, like Miranda watching Carrie with Mr. Big in Sex and the City, a favorite among Gen Z, wanted to shake her by the shoulders—will recognize the feeling.)
But what would Laura Doyle and Arthur Brooks say? Thankfully, a new generation of dating advice is also gently advising women to snap out of it. And, controversial as it may be to say so, this type of “tough love” is particularly vital for Catholic daters, who are wasting precious, finite time. Of course, complications happen, but none of us has infinite time to discern and pursue our vocations—though we certainly all have an obligation to do so—especially if that vocation may entail being fruitful and multiplying in a physical sense. We should therefore be good stewards of the time we’ve been given, being especially wary of squandering it on irresponsible—dare we say, self-indulgent—delulu fancies.
A recent feature in The New York Times profiles Laura Doyle, a contrarian relationship guru who’s ruffled feathers—and gained a cult following—with her retrograde advice for women in difficult relationships. (She offers such old-school wisdom as stop nagging, stop micromanaging, and most provocatively, “surrender” control within marriage.) But while the Times largely focused on Doyle’s advice for married women, the Californian has also written widely about dating, and her insights in that area are similarly countercultural: relinquish control of the courtship’s outcome, let a man pursue you, and stop trying to coax affection or commitment where it doesn’t exist. If he is flirting with you but not actually committing, be realistic about what you’re seeing. Becoming fixated on someone who is not committing risks potentially missing legitimate opportunities altogether. Whether applied to dating or marriage, a common thread of Doyle’s wisdom is stop trying to manipulate reality into what you want it to be. In other words: don’t be delulu.
Social scientist and “happiness expert” Dr. Arthur Brooks has also been wading into the world of dating advice. In a recent piece for The Free Press, he wrote, provocatively, “Dating Apps Aren’t Broken. You’re Just Using Them Wrong.” Would that this message could be plastered on the billboards or subway walls along the commutes of all ultra-picky delulu girls everywhere. Brooks’s main takeaway is that while most young people want love, they often screen potential partners for the wrong qualities. Instead of overvaluing superficial markers of compatibility (like chemistry, excitement, “sparks,” and explosive “fireworks”—all qualities Marianne seeks), Brooks advises seeking the traits that actually predict a good long-term mate: honesty, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and crucially, a clearly stated desire for commitment. These traits may be a little less “sexy” than, say, those driving the tortured dynamic between Jane and the “Byronic hero,” Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre (another Austen-adjacent classic). But they translate into “durable pair-bond mating for survival, growth, and development of family,” or as Brooks puts it, “all the stuff you say you want in your wedding vows.” In other words, stop falling for the idea of a man (or simply the one who elicits “butterflies”) and start paying attention to the evidence of his character and intentions—data points that may require giving someone a few shy, uncomfortable dates (rather than cutting him off after one) to fully evaluate. This is, again, another way of saying: don’t be delulu.
Rachael Sherrill, a lesser-known dating and relationship coach—another blonde from California—actually puts it best. In a YouTube video that should be required watching for every Catholic woman starting at age eighteen, Sherrill explains what she calls “the dating strategy of the decade.” The strategy sounds like it should be common-sense. But again, in this age of breadcrumbing and situationships (and Austen’s apparently), it isn’t, insofar as it requires slaying the sacred cow of delusion. “When you are dating, from here on out, I want you girls to get into the habit of becoming most available for the guys that give you the most attention. Are you tracking with me?” she asks. “And then I want you to become the most unavailable person for men who are not giving you attention, who are giving you breadcrumbs, who give you a little and then pull back, give you a little, then they’re not there.” She continues, “Guys who are leaving you breadcrumbs, I want you to become uninterested in. And for the guys who are actually showing attention and intention to you and towards you, I want you to become available.”
Sherrill has said elsewhere on social media that this advice is difficult for women to absorb because they’re conditioned to want unavailable men—what we might, again, call the Byronic hero (the brooding, emotionally unavailable type). But Sherrill attributes women’s tendency to discount the attention of generous, consistent, stable men to issues of self-confidence and unresolved wounds that can be addressed and healed, allowing them to recalibrate what—and whom—they find attractive.
Matthew Hussey also fits this category. One of his recurring admonitions is deceptively simple: “Attention is not intention.” Like Willoughby, a man can text you, flirt with you, enjoy spending time with you, and shower you with attention without actually intending to build a future with you. Instead, try to “value character as much as you value chemistry,” Hussey says—to look beyond the intoxicating sparks of attraction and ask whether the person in front of you is actually honest, loyal, kind, and capable of following through. In other words, attention is not commitment and chemistry is not character; “the false love stories we tell ourselves about situations that don’t actually represent any real potential” should not be mistaken for evidence of relationships that do not yet exist.
Doyle, Brooks, Sherrill, and Hussey are all offering excellent (albeit tough) advice. If only Marianne could have scrolled through Instagram (in between traipsing wistfully through the English countryside—admittedly a better use of time for other reasons) and found their work before meeting Willoughby. And if only the delulus of this day and age would listen.
Like Willoughby, a man can text you, flirt with you, enjoy spending time with you, and shower you with attention without actually intending to build a future with you.
Today, it’s discussed ad nauseam in certain public-policy circles, but the West’s marriage and birth rates are concerningly low. This is happening even among Catholics. As a new report from the Institute for Family Studies points out, the number of Catholic weddings in the United States has plummeted by 74 percent since 1970, from 415,000 to just 109,000 in 2024. Contributing to this dynamic of declining marriage rates is the fact that, frustrated with breadcrumbing and situationships, some women are entering their secular “celibacy eras,” opting out of dating altogether. Others remain hopelessly delulu, holding out for romantic fantasies nourished by some combination of the Disney Princess-industrial complex and a lingering cultural weakness for the brooding (read: “avoidant”) Byronic hero. Neither response is particularly conducive to finding and forming stable marriages. If we want to push back against these tendencies, the growing cohort of anti-delulu dating coaches is a surprisingly good place to start.
This takes on added weight for Catholics. Catholics are called to discern and live a vocation—to foster an attitude of “vigilance and a conscious attentiveness to the voice of God” and what he wants of our lives, as John Paul II wrote in 1988’s Christifideles Laici. A Catholic should aim to figure out quickly what that vocation is. (“The fundamental objective of the formation of the lay faithful is an ever-clearer discovery of one’s vocation and the ever-greater willingness to live it so as to fulfil one’s mission,” he continues in the same document). Catholics should ask themselves first if the vocation might be to religious life. If not—if and when a young person discerns that he or she is called to marriage—he or she should be serious, not delusional, about finding a spouse. That spouse shouldn’t be someone who repulses the discerner, of course, but to be overly fixated on chemistry—on the “soulmate myth,” as Brad Wilcox puts it—is to make an idol of romance. “A vocation—any vocation—is a school of charity and a means of crucifixion,” writes Benjamin Mann in a blogpost aptly titled “Discernment Is Not About You.”
Paradoxically, then, dating does not have to be the most romantic process in the entire world, just one of obedience. After all, “Your vocation is not the answer to the question of your being; it is only a part of God’s pledge that the answer will be given in the end,” Mann writes. Thus, Catholics should not idolize romance and chemistry. Instead, they should pursue self-giving marital love—which can be a little bit more boring than a volatile Hollywood romance, perhaps, but also a lot more stable and self-giving—not only for one’s spouse, but also for the surrounding community, who are counting on them to have children, raise good kids, and be a witness to Christ’s love with their marriage.
And the fruits of such sanctifying obedience can be rapturously surprising. A young priest in Minnesota recently had a mystical experience while celebrating Mass: an intense sense of Christ’s presence during the consecration of the Precious Blood. Surely every day of his priesthood does not feel like that—much of it presumably feels like the mundane, repetitive fidelity to any vocation. But on that particular day, extraordinary grace broke through in the midst of ordinary vocational obedience. That type of mystical encounter with the other side of the veil is not promised to anyone, but it is a reminder that faithfulness and obedience to one’s vocation can open onto realities far more ecstatic than the “Hollywood” feelings we are so tempted to demand at the outset.
All hope is not lost for single Catholics, contemporary delulu girls, or even for Marianne. As viewers of the Oakley version will hopefully soon see, there are good options—men of good character—who can be obscured when a delulu girl’s mind is clouded, only to come into view once she undergoes a reality check (usually administered by a tough-love sister or girlfriend). We can only assume Oakley will do justice to this dynamic, but viewers will have to watch the movie to find out. In the meantime, the fact remains: Two centuries after Austen diagnosed the problem, we have no shortage of good advice for avoiding romantic delusion. And life on the other side of being delulu can be pretty good—even lavishly abundant—with the graces that come from obedience to God’s call.