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OK, so today I want to talk about
how we talk about love.
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And specifically,
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I want to talk about what's wrong
with how we talk about love.
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Most of us will probably fall in love
a few times over the course of our lives,
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and in the English language,
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this metaphor,
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falling,
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is really the main way that we
talk about that experience.
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I don't know about you,
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but when I conceptualize this metaphor,
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what I picture is straight
out of a cartoon --
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like there's a man,
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he's walking down the sidewalk,
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without realizing it he crosses
over an open manhole,
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and he just plummets
into the sewer below.
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And I picture it this way because
falling is not jumping.
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Falling is accidental,
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it's uncontrollable.
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It's something that happens to us
without our consent.
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And this --
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this is the main way we talk
about starting a new relationship.
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I am a writer and I'm also
an English teacher,
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which means I think about
words for a living.
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You could say that I get paid
to argue that the language we use matters,
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and I would like to argue that many
of the metaphors we use
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to talk about love --
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maybe even most of them --
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are a problem.
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So, in love we fall.
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We're struck ...
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we are crushed ...
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we swoon ...
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we burn with passion.
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Love makes us crazy,
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and it makes us sick.
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Our hearts ache,
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and then they break.
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So our metaphors equate
the experience of loving someone
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to extreme violence or illness.
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(Laughter)
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They do.
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And they position us as the victims
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of unforeseen and totally
unavoidable circumstances.
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My favorite one of these is "smitten,"
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which is the past participle
of the word smite.
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And if you look this word up
in the dictionary --
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(Laughter)
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You will see that it can be defined
as both grievous affliction
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and to be very much in love.
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So, I tend to associate the word smite
with a very particular context,
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which is the Old Testament.
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In the Book of Exodus alone
there are 16 references to smiting,
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which is the word that the bible uses
for the vengeance of an angry God.
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Here we are using the same
word to talk about love
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that we use to explain
a plague of locusts.
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(Laughter)
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Right?
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So, how did this happen?
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How have we come to associate love
with great pain and suffering?
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And why do we talk about
this ostensibly good experience
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as if we are victims?
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These are difficult questions,
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but I have some theories.
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And to think this through,
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I want to focus on one
metaphor in particular,
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which is the idea of love is madness.
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When I first started
researching romantic love,
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I found these madness
metaphors everywhere.
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The history of Western culture
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is full of language that equates
love to mental illness.
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These are just a few examples.
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William Shakespeare:
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"Love is merely a madness,"
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from "As You Like It."
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Friedrich Nietsche,
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"There is always some madness in love."
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"Got me looking, got me looking
so crazy in love -- "
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(Laughter)
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From the great philosopher,
Beyoncé Knowles.
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(Laughter)
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I fell in love for the first
time when I was 20,
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and it was a pretty turbulent
relationship right from the start.
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And it was long distance
for the first couple of years,
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so for me that meant very
high highs and very low lows.
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I can remember one moment in particular.
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I was sitting on a bed
in a hostel in South America,
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and I was watching the person
I love walk out the door.
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And it was late,
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it was nearly midnight,
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we'd gotten into an argument over dinner,
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and when we got back to our room,
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he threw his things in the bag
and stormed out.
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While I can no longer remember
what that argument was about,
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I very clearly remember
how I felt watching him leave.
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So, I was 22,
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it was my first time
in the developing world,
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and I was totally alone.
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I had another week until my flight home,
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and I knew the name
of the town that I was in,
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and the name of the city
that I needed to get to to fly out,
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but I had no idea how to get around,
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I had no guidebook and very little money,
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and I spoke no Spanish.
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Someone more adventurous than me
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might have seen this as
a moment of opportunity,
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but I just froze.
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I just sat there.
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And then I burst into tears.
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But despite my panic,
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some small voice in my head thought,
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"Wow, that was dramatic.
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I must really be doing
this love thing right."
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(Laughter)
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Because some part of me
wanted to feel miserable in love.
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And it sounds so strange to me now,
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but at 22,
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I longed to have dramatic experiences,
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and in that moment I was irrational
and furious and devastated,
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and weirdly enough,
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I thought that this somehow
legitimized the feelings I had
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for the guy who had just left me.
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I think on some level I wanted
to feel a little bit crazy,
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because I thought that
that was how loved worked.
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This really should not be surpsising
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considering that according to Wikipedia,
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there are eight films,
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14 songs,
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two albums and one novel
with the title "Crazy Love."
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About half-an-hour later,
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he came back to our room.
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We made up,
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we spent another mostly
happy week travelling together,
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and then when I got home,
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I thought, "That was so
terrible and so great,
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this must be a real romance."
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I expected my first love
to feel like madness,
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and of course it met
that expectation very well.
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But loving someone like that --
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as if my entire well-being depended
on him loving me back --
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was not very good for me,
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or for him.
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But I suspect this experience of love
is not that unusual.
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Most of us do feel a bit mad
in the early stages of romantic love.
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In fact there is research to confirm
that this is somewhat normal,
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because neurochemically speaking,
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romantic love and mental illness
are not that easily distinguished.
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This is true.
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So, this study from 1999 used blood tests
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to confirm that the serotonin
levels of the newly in love
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very closely resemembeled
the serotonin levels
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of people who had been diagnosed
with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
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(Laughter)
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Yes,
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and low levels of serotonin
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are also associated
with Seasonal affective disorder
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and Depression.
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So, there is some evidence
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that love is associated with changes
to our moods and our behaviors,
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and there are other studies
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to confirm that most
relationships begin this way.
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Researchers believe
that the low levels of serotonin
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is correlated with obsessive thinking
about the object of love,
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which is like this feeling that someone
has set up camp in your brain.
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And most of us feel this way
when we first fall in love,
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but the good news is that it
doesn't always last that long --
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usually from a few months
to a couple of years.
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When I got back from
my trip to South America,
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I spent a lot of time alone in my room,
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checking my email,
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desperate to hear from the guy I loved.
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I decided that if my friends could not
understand my grievous affliction,
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then I did not need their friendship.
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So, I stopped hanging out
with most of them.
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And it was probably the most
unhappy year of my life,
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but I think I felt like it was
my job to be miserable,
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because if I could be miserable,
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then I would prove how much I loved him,
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and if I could prove it,
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then we would have to
end up together eventually.
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This is the real madness,
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because there is no cosmic rule
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that says that great suffering
equals great reward,
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but we talk about love as if this is true.
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Our experiences of love are both
biological and cultural.
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Our biology tells us that love is good
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by activating these reward
circuits in our brain,
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and it tells us that love is painful
when after a fight or a breakup
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that neurochemical reward is withdrawn.
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And in fact --
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and maybe you've heard this --
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neurochemically speaking,
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going through a breakup is a lot
like going through cocaine withdrawal,
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which I find reassuring --
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(Laughter)
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And then our culture uses language
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to shape and reinforce
these ideas about love.
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In this case,
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we're talking about metaphors
about pain, and addiction, and madness.
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It's kind of an interesting feedback loop.
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Love is powerful and at times painful,
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and we express this
in our words and stories,
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but then our words and stories prime us
to expect love to be powerful and painful.
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What's interesting to me
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is that all of this happens in a culture
that values lifelong monogamy.
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It seems like we want it both ways:
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we want love to feel like madness,
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and we want it to last an entire lifetime.
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That sounds terrible.
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(Laughter)
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To reconcile this,
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we need to either change our culture
or change our expectations.
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So, imagine if we were all
less passive in love.
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If we were more assertive,
more open-mined, more generous,
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and instead of falling in love,
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we stepped into love.
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I know that this is asking a lot,
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but I'm not actually the first
person to suggest this.
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In their book "Metaphors We Live By,"
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linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff
suggest a really interesting solution
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to this dilemna,
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which is to change our metaphors.
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They argue that metaphors really do
shape the way we experience the world,
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and that they can even act
as a guide for future actions,
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like self-fulfilling prophecies.
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Johnson and Lakoff suggest
a new metaphor for love:
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love is a collaborative work of art.
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I really like this way
of thinking about love.
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Linguists talk about metaphors
as having entailments,
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which is essentially a way of considering
all the implications of,
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or ideas contained
within a given metaphor.
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And Johnson and Lakoff
talk about everything
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that collaborating
on a work of art entails:
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effort, compromise,
patience, shared goals.
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These ideas align nicely
with our cultural investment
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in long-term romantic commitment,
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but they also work well
for other kinds of relationships --
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short-term, casual, polyamorous,
non-monogamous, asexual --
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because this metaphor brings
much more complex ideas
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to the experience of loving someone.
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So if love is a collaborative work of art,
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then love is an aesthetic experience.
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Love is unpredictable,
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love is creative,
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love requires communication
and discipline,
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it is frustrating and
emotionally demanding,
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and love involves both joy and pain.
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Ultimately, each experience
of love is different.
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When I was younger,
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it never occurred to me
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that I was allowed to demand
more from love,
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that I didn't have to just accept
whatever love offered.
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When 14-year-old Juliet first meets --
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when 14-year-old Juliet
cannot be with Romeo,
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whom she has met four days ago,
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she does not feel
disappointed or angsty --
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where is she?
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She wants to die.
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Right?
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And just as a refesher,
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at this point in the play
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act three of five,
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Romeo is not dead.
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He's alive,
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he's healthy,
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he's just been banished from the city.
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I understand that sixteenth-century Verona
is unlike contemporary North America,
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and yet when I first read this play --
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also at age 14 --
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Juliet's suffering made sense to me.
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Reframing love as something
I get to create with someone I admire,
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rather than something that just happens
to me without my conrol or consent,
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is empowering.
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It's still hard.
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Love still feels totally maddening
and crushing some days,
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and when I feel really frustrated,
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I have to remind myself:
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my job in this relationship
is to talk to my partner
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about what I want to make together.
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This isn't easy either,
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but it's just so much better
than the alternative,
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which is that thing
that feels like madness.
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This version of love is not about winning
of losing someone's affection.
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Instead, it requires that you
trust your partner,
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and talk about things
when trusting feels difficult,
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which sounds so simple,
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but is actually a kind
of revolutionary, radical act.
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This is because you get to stop
thinking about yourself,
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and what you're gaining
or losing in your relationship,
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and you get to start thinking
about what you have to offer.
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This version of love
allows us to say things like,
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"Hey, we're not very good collaborators,
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maybe this isn't for us,"
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or, "That relationship
was shorter than I had planned,
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but it was still kind of beautiful."
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The beautiful thing about
the collaborative work of art
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is that it will not paint
or draw or sculpt itself.
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This version of love allows us
to decide what it looks like.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)