Metaphors about love in online dating advertisements might seem to be an easy and inconsequential way to express people’s romantic expectations. Using Critical Metaphor Analysis methodology, this paper takes a closer look at a sample of love metaphors used by Spanish-speaking heterosexual ad posters, to show how they use the metaphors to create a discourse of traditional romance in a modern medium, the online dating world. These metaphors are powerful tools for conveying traditional ideologies about romance and relationships. Additionally, they provide ad posters with a useful rhetorical tool for portraying themselves as ideal romantic partners, ‘regular’ and/or ‘normal’ heterosexuals, who play according to the regulatory norms of their gender, allowing them to ‘sell’ themselves as better candidates for romance.