How many times have you used the word “love” in the past week? Maybe you were referring to someone’s outfit, ending a phone call, or talking to a romantic partner. Did you really mean it? Did you feel it? Did you mean the same thing each time? The overuse of the word “love” is a major problem, said Cambridge-based therapist and relationship expert Kyle Carney in an interview with the HPR. Ending a call with “I love you” is “quite empty,” Carney explained, and yet “we seem to have a focus on it in our culture.” Varying definitions as well as overuse of the word love contribute to Americans’ struggles with romantic relationships. We don’t know how to love, when we are in love, or how love transforms over time. Forty to 50 percent of United States marriages end in divorce, with even higher rates for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th marriages. One in four women and one in nine men experience severe intimate partner physical violence. Why are we so bad at something so central to our culture? To solve this challenge, some have proposed a system of love education — teaching Americans, particularly young people, how to love, just as we teach sex education or math.
The State of Relationships
In the United States, divorce is everywhere. In a national survey, 73 percent of people cited “lack of commitment,” 55 percent cited cheating, 41 percent cited lack of preparation, and 29 percent cited abuse as reasons for their splits. The average length of a marriage before divorce is eight years, and couples going through a divorce have an average age of 30.
The problem starts long before marriage. Danielle West, a middle school teacher for Boston Public Schools, is worried about her students’ relationships. In an interview with the HPR, she commented, “If people are dating, they will hold each other’s phone because they don’t trust that they won’t text other people during the school day.” Students are equating love with attention and have developed the misguided understanding that their “relationships will last forever.”
Rick Weissbourd, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and leader of the Making Caring Common project, has studied the state of our relationships extensively. In an interview with the HPR, Weissbourd expressed concern that we “lump … many forms of intense feeling … all together under the name love … [and that] we conflate infatuation with love, lust with love, [and] preoccupation with love.” In addition to meaning different things when we use the word “love,” he feels the country fails to understand that love changes over time. For Weissbourd, “When I say ‘I love you’ to my wife on my wedding day, I mean something different than when I say ‘I love you’ now. When I first said it, love was about imagination and now it’s much more about admiration or history.”
Carney, meanwhile, is concerned about couples modeling the distorted relationships they see in the media. “FOMO,” or fear of missing out, is a huge problem. She explained: “The image that your friends are curating on Facebook is not a real image and you have to not fall into that trap.” Love is not perfect. The media either displays dysfunctional, jealous relationships or unrealistic happiness. Carney added that the “stress of modern life” caused by longer work hours, a focus on achievement, and living farther away from one’s parents, places a strain on love. Divorce rates have seen a slight decline, with individuals now marrying a bit later in life. However, with the media playing a greater role in our life and the increasing stress in our society, it is unclear whether this trend can continue. The need for an intervention is urgent.
A Solution
Love education. Weissbourd, a major advocate for love lessons, thinks we need to “teach kids … the different forms of love and intense feeling” so that they can separate out their feelings for friends, family members, long-term romantic partners, and crushes. Weissbourd would also focus on how love progresses over time so individuals can set realistic expectations for their relationships. For example, Weissbourd knows that we are “not going to prevent people from being obsessed” or infatuated with another person. However, we “might prevent people from getting into relationships repeatedly based on obsession if we point out that it’s a feeling of obsession” and not a feeling of love. Similarly, Weissbourd worries that couples today think they “have fallen out of love after five years” if the infatuation has faded. He wants these couples to see that their relationship is evolving and “they have gained something” as a couple.
Carney would focus on “developing listening and empathy skills.” In her relationship counseling work, Carney’s approach focuses on building these skills, and her sessions have been helpful in solving clients’ relationship challenges. Carney explained that love is all about “stepping into someone else’s shoes,” “opening yourself up to vulnerability,” developing “emotional confidence,” and “talking about hurt.” These skills, Carney thinks, will help people actually showcase and demonstrate love through actions, rather than by just saying ‘I love you.’
Creating this system does not mean starting from scratch. Weissbourd sees a strong foundation among adults and elders in our society, but worries that they are failing to share this relationship knowledge with younger generations. In many cultures, couples visit a religious or community figure who is knowledgeable about love before getting married. To be married within the Catholic Church, all couples must meet with the priest and take a mandatory pre-marriage course. An American love education system could similarly incorporate the perspectives of parents, grandparents, and older individuals who have experienced a variety of relationships. This sort of education happens in households and communities, not just schools.
West hopes that any love education program incorporates information on how to love yourself. She does not want her students to feel fulfilled only if “someone is telling them how beautiful or how great they are.” She advocates for universal self-love education at the end of middle school when students are beginning to engage in romantic and sexual relationships. Love education is closely linked to social-emotional learning, which encompasses key skills like emotion-management, positive decision-making, and relationship-building. Since many school districts require students to develop these social-emotional learning blocks, love education could be easily integrated into this curriculum time.
Sex education is by no means a perfect example. However, data does show that when the education includes prevention, risk, and decision-making support, it is effective. Teenage pregnancy, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and gender-based violence have decreased in states with robust sex education programs. Love education could have the same success and be taught in tandem with sex ed.
Implementation
West worries about this topic being taught in her classroom of 28 students; she thinks a smaller group advisory period could be a good place for this work to happen. With the right preparation, West thinks she has the skills to deliver this education — finding space in the packed school day, though, is her primary concern.
Through his work, Weissbourd has found that “when [he talks]about this and [writes] about this … there are a lot of people who think schools should stay away from this.” He often gets the response that “schools haven’t figured out reading and writing yet” and “parents should do this.” But the reality, he thinks, is that many parents do not have the tools, confidence, or desire to teach their kids how to love.
Positive love and loving relationships are statistically good for us. People in loving relationships experience less stress and more joy, stay in the hospital for less time, and live longer. Close friendships as well as romantic relationships built on mutual love and respect play a crucial role in wellbeing and happiness. But without intervention, dysfunctional relationships will continue to waste our potential for love. Widespread rates of divorce, infidelity, and abuse make it clear that Americans are desperately in need of some love education.
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