Pericles kissed Aspasia every day of his life until he died in 429 B.C.

Before they married, Anna Murray Douglass facilitated Frederick Douglass's escape from slavery by buying him a train ticket and a sailor's disguise.

Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon had never met, but had both heard of each other and loved from afar. They were forbidden to marry, but Ferdinand disguised himself as a lowly merchant while Isabella deceived her half-brother King Enrique IV of Castile, thus causing them to finally meet and eventually marry.

Romance used to know no boundaries. Since the beginning of time, men did romantic gestures for women, such as trading their best cattle or material possessions to gain the permission of a woman's family in order to marry her. Kings would shower their queens in gold and jewelry. If a woman wasn't properly and financially demostrated of her worth, the marriage basically had no potential.

Now, I'm not saying women demand to be showered with riches and jewelry (although I can't say we wouldn't enjoy that). What I'm saying is the quality of romance in 2017 is laughable compared to what used to be custom.

It's dying, and you're the cause of it.

Why? Because girls' standards of what they want in a relationship have gone scarily low, from just wanting a guy to look at them to wanting their boyfriend to call them pretty. We barely ask for anything at all, and not in a good way. Basically everything has become a "#RelationshipGoal" because all you're asking is for him to hold your hand in public and do that little thumb thing.

You should want a man who doesn't just do the bare minimum to skate by with the title of being your person of interest. You deserve a man that does way more than just that. When you try to ask as little as possible from a guy in order to hope that he sees you as cool and sticks around, you're denying yourself of what you deserve: affection, romance, and effort.

Guys, we don't need you to give our families 27 goats and a gold necklace to show us of our worth to you. We shouldn't need to ask you to prove it ourselves. But in a day and age of where "Netflix and Chill" counts as a real date, it sounds like we need to.

We, as women, need to begin to raise their standards. Not through the ceiling, but at least a little higher than purposely ignoring a guy's messages just to see if he responds, because "if he double texts, he cares." By letting the bare minimum be considered acceptable, you're letting what romance used to be die slowly on your own watch. You deserve someone who will kiss you every single day until they die. Don't forget that.