10 questions on love with Rick Weissbourd
If Valentine’s Day evokes thoughts of chocolates, candy hearts with messages, and flowers, you’re not alone. The holiday branding has been consistent for decades. But what if we thought about Valentine’s Day more broadly than this? What if we used it as an opportunity to explore the value and quality of our relationships; with our partners, our friends, and our kids?
In advance of the heart-filled holiday, we sat down with our Faculty Director Rick Weissbourd to talk all things love. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our conversation, including the one message he wants to share with all parents today.
What has your research found about relationships?
In a recent survey we did of young adults ages 18 to 25 years old, an alarming 58% reported having little or no meaning or purpose in their life. And when we asked open-ended questions in our focus groups about why they lack meaning and purpose, and where they got meaning and purpose, it became clear that a large majority get meaning and purpose from relationships. Not just from romantic relationships, but from all relationships. We also found high percentages of young adults are feeling lonely and disconnected. We also found that only half were confident that they would have serious and lasting and gratifying romantic relationships in their lives. A lot of people are experiencing anxiety and depression. 18- to 25-year-olds have experienced much higher rates than teenagers. One big reason I think is a lack of meaning and purpose. And one reason for that lack of meaning and purpose is loneliness and I think not feeling gratified in romantic relationships and worrying about whether or not you will find gratification in romantic relationships.
Where do you think that worry comes from?
I think it's a number of things. One is that almost half of marriages end in divorce. Young people look out at the adult population and they don't see a lot of happy marriages. Also, we fail epically in the country to prepare young people for romantic love. We don't talk to them about romantic love. We don't help them develop the skills they will need to be successful in romantic relationships. I also think, and this is a good thing, that people want more from their romantic relationships than they have in the past. They want a deeper and more gratifying relationship. They want a relationship where they can share their vulnerabilities. And that's a wonderful thing that people are looking to their romantic relationships for these more deep and often profound sources of fulfillment. But it creates higher expectations too. And I think that may be one of the reasons that young people are having anxiety as well.
“Really distill what it is that you think leads to a meaningful romantic relationship and figure out how best to communicate that with your kid...and it can be wonderful to have conversations with young people about romantic love.”
You mentioned not preparing people for the skills they need for healthy relationships. What would that look like?
We have all kinds of industries, schools, higher ed jobs, programs that prepare young people for work. We just do almost nothing to prepare them for love. I'm not suggesting, although I think it'd be a good thing, that every young person should be required to take a class in love. What I am suggesting is that we should be doing sex ed. It's very important to do. But it is just as important, if not more important, to do love education, to really educate young people about the wonderful and difficult and disciplined work of developing a really gratifying and lasting love relationship. Sex ed in this country is primarily disaster prevention. It's primarily how not to get pregnant, how not to get STDs. It’s not about how to develop a meaningful relationship with somebody else. When you don't have meaningful relationships, the costs are very high. The emotional costs are high, but also the financial costs of divorce and displacement and domestic conflict and alcohol abuse and substance abuse are very high. So, there are all kinds of reasons why we should be investing more in young people having gratifying, lasting romantic relationships and I think it should be part of sex ed. But also English classes, history classes, social studies classes, these are all opportunities to talk about romantic love. My experience is high school students really want to talk about romantic love. Afterschool programs could have portions of them that deal with romantic love. I think courses in college on romantic love would be a great thing. They can be a elective courses, but I think college students are super interested in romantic love. There are lots of opportunities to do this if we're mindful about it and focused on it. But we have to be intentional and much more systematic than we are.
You mentioned schools and colleges having a role. What should parents do?
Parents do have a lot of wisdom to share. This is the kind of thing where I think parents can just be curious with their kids. They don't have to be prescriptive or inundate their kids with warnings or red flags. They can be curious about what kind of relationships their kids want to have, share what their own experience has been in relationships, learn what their kids' worries are about relationships. A lot of kids want to talk to them about their worries. Our research shows a lot of kids want advice from their parents, or another adult, about how to start a relationship and how to handle a breakup. If we're not judgmental, if we're willing to be resources and to listen and to be curious, a lot more young people would come to us and want our advice. And that means that we have to do some work too.
Where should parents start?
Young people are inundated with images of romantic love. As parents, if you're with your child and you're listening to a song on the radio about romantic love, and there are all kinds of songs, where the message is that if you fall in love, you should hang on for dear life, even if it's harmful to you. You have a responsibility as a parent to intervene in that situation. Part of this is not creating a moment or a space to have conversation. It's just reacting to all the inputs that your child is getting all the time on radio, tv, film.
What is a good example in media of romantic relationships?
Friday Night Lights has a great romantic relationship in it. You could talk about what makes that romantic relationship great. There are other examples of other relationships that are really more about infatuation or passion or intoxication. As parents, you can talk to your kids about that too. Is that really love? If it is love, what is it based on? Is it likely to be enduring? These are great conversations to have.
What else can parents say?
Part of this is disentangling passion, infatuation, and love. You might become consumed with somebody, and that doesn't mean you're in love with them. Obsession and love are different. Infatuation and love are different. You want to say that meaningful love has a moral basis to your kids. And by a moral basis, I mean that you care about your own wellbeing, but you also care deeply about someone else's wellbeing. And you're interested and invested in knowing who they are so you can care for them in a way that's going to be meaningful to them. That's a very important conversation to have. I also think a conversation about self-awareness and the importance of knowing your own flaws and shielding people from your own flaws is a very important conversation for parents to have with kids. I think a conversation about what to do when you get stuck in a relationship and how you have a conversation with somebody else about why you're stuck or why you're critical, or why you're feeling distant. You can even role play with your kids for some of those conversations when they're in the thick of them. All these are conversations that I think parents can have and in the right circumstances a lot of teenagers and young adults could really welcome these kind of conversations.
“Too often we fail to tell people that we love them. Valentine’s Day can be a great opportunity to do that. ”
If there is one thing you wish more parents knew about romantic relationships as it pertains to their kids, what would it be?
We think we can be passive about this and our kids will figure it out. We have a lot of evidence that people don't just figure it out. And when we're passive about it, we are advocating responsibility to popular culture to teach our kids about romantic love. They're going to learn about romantic love from TV and film and songs. I would argue that the damage done by images of love in film, TV and song is more significant than the damage done by images of violence. We fret a lot about violence. We don't fret a lot about images of romantic love in TV and film. So, the big message is don't be passive about it. Be intentional about it. Really distill what it is that you think leads to a meaningful romantic relationship and figure out how best to communicate that with your kid...and it can be wonderful to have conversations with young people about romantic love. My students always really appreciate when we talk about it.
What do you tell your students?
I don't try to be too prescriptive with my students. There's no sort of formula for having a romantic relationship. I talk to my students about imagination and history. One of the problems that they’re facing is that a lot of young love is about imagination. A lot of love at my age is about history, the history you have with somebody else. I encourage my students to talk to older people who have had effective romantic relationships and to understand their history and understand how their relationships evolve and their relationships are fluid and not dynamic, and the kind of challenges they face and how they overcome those challenges.
Do you have a Valentine’s Day message you’d like to share?
Too often we fail to tell people that we love them. Valentine's Day can be a great opportunity to do that. It’s also worth us thinking all the time, whether we're single or in a relationship, about what kind of romantic love we want have and how we get there. Even in the most successful relationships we can think about how we can be a more caring and helpful partner in a way that makes us and our partners more compassionate and more humane. As families, as communities, as schools, there’s a lot we can do but we have to get focused on it. That's the big message here, let's take this up.
Posted by Jamie Finn, Digital Communications Strategist
