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A better way to talk about love

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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
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    over the course of our lives,
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    and in the English language,
    this metaphor, 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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    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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    (Laughter)
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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 as 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 Nietzsche:
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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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    I was 22, 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, 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 surprising,
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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,
    he came back to our room.
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    We made up.
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    We spent another mostly
    happy week traveling 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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    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 resembled
    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, 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 to confirm
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    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,
    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 -- 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, we're talking
    about metaphors about pain
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    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
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    to expect love to be powerful and painful.
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    What's interesting to me
    is that all of this happens
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    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 dilemma,
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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 as 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 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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    or, 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 refresher,
    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 16th-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
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    without my control 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
    or 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.
    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)
Title:
A better way to talk about love
Speaker:
Mandy Len Catron
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
15:17

English subtitles

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