What Is This Thing Called Love?

Teaching the twelfth graders in my Sexuality and Society class about love is a daunting task. One main problem in talking about the concept of love is that the word love has too many uses. My students love their sweethearts, their iphones, the pizza that's served in our Dining Hall, and, on some occasions, will even admit to loving their parents and siblings. So, is any of that love? Valentine's Day isn't any help either. There love is equated with gushy sentiment, or hot sex, or pledges of eternity. Is any of that love? How might we talk about love in a way that clarifies its meaning and helps young people figure out whether they're feeling love or not?

One way I've approached this in my classroom is to come at the topic by asking my students to consider three aspects of what might be called love: romance, intimacy, and sex. Romance maximizes the emotional aspects of an act or a relationship. It seeks to create feelings of desire, affection, caring, and "being in love" (that bubbly feeling that softens our heart and allows our own gentleness and tenderness to flow). Intimacy maximizes the connective aspects of an act or relationship. It seeks honesty, openness, closeness, deeper understanding, and connection with a partner. Sex maximizes the physical aspects of an act or relationship. It seeks bodily sensation and pleasure both from and for the partner (and, by the way, this can be accomplished by a lot more than intercourse). Romance joins our hearts; intimacy joins our brains; and sex joins our bodies.

Asking students to look at the same behavior through the lenses of romance, intimacy, and sex yields eye-opening results. Let's think about kissing. Romantic kissing might include soft, gentle, kisses on lips, cheeks, eyes, ears, etc. Intimate kissing might include kissing while holding onto each other and looking deeply into each others' eyes. Sexual kissing might have more depth and urgency and might be accompanied by more erotic touching than romantic or intimate kissing. Now think about texting, online interactions, intercourse, and oral sex through those lenses. How do they look? Does everything fit into every category? What is it like to be romantic or intimate at school - and does being sexual really fit in school? How might these behaviors work at a party? What's a romantic word? An intimate word? A sexual word? What gifts, movies, or songs might fall into each category?

In thinking about these aspects, my students can see that none of them, in and of itself, is love. Love might, however, result from a combination of all of these factors. That combination will be different in each relationship, but remove romance, intimacy, or sex from the equation and what's left probably isn't love. "Friends with benefits" tends to have intimacy and sex but not romance. A hook up may have sex but lack romance and/or intimacy.

Perhaps the elusive and amorphous word "love" now seems a bit more concrete and accessible? It often does for my students. In this season of Valentine's Day, I wish them - and you - love.