In my women’s history class yesterday, we were making our way through Lynn Phillips’ Flirting With Danger, a text about which I have written before and which I have used in class for the last several years.
Phillips talks a great deal about discourses that impact the lives of contemporary young American women. Among these is what she calls the “Love Conquers All” discourse:
The love conquers all discourse does not limit itself to the notion that long-term heterosexual relationships are necessary for women’s fulfillment in love. Indeed, it suggests that finding the right man will somehow solve all of life’s problems.
Fed by Disney movies and pop songs, magazines and movies, most girls run into the notion that love conquers all early on. Some fiercely resist it, of course. The discourse suggests, however, that those who most fiercely resist making romantic love a priority are fooling themselves; from Jane Austen’s time to our own, we have countless fictional heroines who are initially dismissive of love, but in the end, succumb to its all-consuming power.
My students know all this, of course. It’s not news to any group of college students that they live in a culture that tries to impose a vision of happy heterosexual fulfillment on each and every one of them. But I’ve found another aspect of the “love conquers all” discourse that Phillips largely ignores: a great many young women (usually younger than typical college-age) go through adolescence with a vast over-estimate of just how much love they have to give to the “right person”.
When I first started working with youth group kids, particularly ninth and tenth-graders, I was struck by how often I would hear the same thing from so many of the girls with whom I worked. In group discussions or in writing, many would say something more or less like this:
I have so much love to give. I’ve never been in love, not really, but I just feel like I have this huge amount of passion inside of me. If I could just find someone whom I could really trust, then I could give him (usually, it’s a him) everything I have inside of me. I know it sounds corny, but I really believe love can heal all our problems. I feel like I have enough love inside of me to change the world, if I could just find a way to let it out.
Some girl would say something like this in a group, and most of the rest would nod vigorously. Clearly, we’re not only teaching many of our girls to see romantic love as a source of the highest fulfillment, we’re somehow sending them the message that their own capacity to give love is extraordinarily potent. It makes sense, after all. We raise most girls in our culture, still, to be “people-pleasers.” Bu the time she’s well into puberty, your average girl has spent most of her remembered lifetime trying to please others: parents, teachers, coaches, peers. She may well have become a first-class pleaser and “praise-junkie.” If she sees herself as relatively good at pleasing mom and dad and teachers, she may imagine that when she gets into an intimate relationship, she will be magnificent as a girlfriend.
Teenage girls are renowned for their vicious self-criticism. Time and again, I’ve heard young women criticize their own appearance, their academic shortcomings, their bad habits. But those same young women will often hasten to say, if they are or have been in a relationship, “You know, I’m a pretty awesome girlfriend.” Or if they haven’t yet been in one: “I am an incredibly loving person, and I would give so much to the right guy.”
Many of us suspect, of course, that there’s a connection between this over-estimation and the “bad boy phenomenon”. After all, if you really believe you’ve got this amazing well-spring of love inside of you, so strong it has the capacity to change the world, what better way to demonstrate its power than to use it to “tame” the wild guy? After all, doctors demonstrate their craft by healing the sick, not merely keeping the already well, healthy! The “my love will change him” discourse is a powerful one, and it’s rooted less in young women’s poor judgment or self-destructiveness and more in a whopping miscalculation of their own power. A woman who believes her love will change a man may simultaneously believe she isn’t worthy of a truly nice guy and, even as she lacks vital self-worth, believe that her selflessness and her love has this capacity to redeem. In some young women, this belief in the purity and intensity of their own love borders on the Messianic.
Long-term relationships have many benefits. One of the best of those benefits is that they tend to destroy any illusion one has about one’s own unique power to heal or change another person. People can and do change, and sometimes they change with the help of a partner. But ultimately, all growth and change is an act of individual will. You can’t love an alcoholic into sobriety, or a sex addict into fidelity, or an anorexic into healthy eating. No human love is strong enough to conquer another’s addiction or to heal the hurt of a terrible past. That kind of healing is an inside job, though others may help; the only love I’ve found that has that kind of capacity to heal is not a mother’s or a lover’s but that of God Herself. Too often, we give ourselves far too little credit for our own ability to change — and we give ourselves far too much credit for our ability to change others.
Feminism , if it stands for anything, stands against the notion that a heterosexual relationship is the sine qua non of each woman’s happiness. Those of us who teach and write and mentor from a feminist perspective almost always do a good job of stressing that simple message that you “don’t need a man to be happy.” Most of us, of course, think that a feminist perspective actually improves the quality of our romantic connections, whoever they are with. But when we talk to our “younger sisters” about sexual relationships through a feminist lens, we need also to have this conversation about love. The greatest attribute that we have may well be our capacity to love, but that love, as powerful as it may seem to us, has its limits. Our bodies and our hearts do not have the capacity to change romantic partners or solve their problems for them. Our hands, however, backed up by willing hearts, can do much to make the world a better place. We do well to remind our younger sisters and ourselves about what love can, and cannot do.
I think this warped thinking about the power of love has also lead both men and women to believe that if it is ‘true love’ it will come naturally and easily. Relationships that develop awkwardness, distance, resentment, or struggles of any kind must not be true love, and the party or parties that come to this realization (if you have to work at it, it isn’t love) move on. They possibly move on to and through a series of disappointing ‘failed’ relationships.
Okay so I’m growing increasingly cynical and disparaging toward the “power of love.” So often when I hear people talk about the power of love, I want to gag at the cheap sentimentality.
That’s out of my system. I sometimes wonder if statements such as “I have so much love to give” are about sex and not emotion. I’ve had one night stands that ended with me feeling like I loved the person I was with. It’s a cliche I suppose but it’s easy to confuse sex and love.
Fed by Disney movies and pop songs, magazines and movies, most girls run into the notion that love conquers all early on.
It’s incredible how much credibility we give things that are merely meant to entertain us. We use the suspension of disbelief to analyze most other elements of movies or books, and yet we seem to think that love presented in these mediums is supposed to be similar to love in real life.
God. Thank you. SO MUCH. It seriously almost made me cry to read this, especially the lines about girls going for the bad-boy. It makes so much sense! We’re fed all this hooey about how somehow our magical girl-love can fix anyone and anything, and taught to loathe ourselves at the same time, so “I don’t deserve better than this asshole–but if I love him hard enough I can fix him” seems such a natural result of this damage.
And then, of course, it’s easy for the assholes of the world to blame the resultant pain on some imaginary inherent desire to self-destruct, or lack of judgment. To be honest, maybe the reason this is tugging at my emotions so much is that this is probably the first time I’ve been told (by someone other than a friend who well, obviously has to say “it’s not your fault”) that it’s *not* my fault.
So many girls need to hear what you’ve said in this post. I want, achingly, for them to see it so maybe they can learn a more accurate message and be spared the pain so many, myself included, have suffered.
Midgetqueen, I’m so pleased this resonated with you. And no,it’s not your fault.
It’s not just young women - or even the young - who are subject to this. If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard “I have so much love to give” from a guy - or even from *myself - I wouldn’t be spending my stimulus check to pay my back taxes…
I’m dealing with a friend right now - ok, not so much a friend as a friendly rival - who’s melting down because the girl he’d set his heart on:
a. hadn’t set her heart on him
b. wasn’t sure what she wanted (iow, was still sane)
c. had a long-standing ambiguous relationship with another man
and
d. felt the need to resolve some of that ambiguity
I’ve heard that phrase from people on the weak end of any number of assymetrical relationships. It is almost always a bad sign, either for the future of the present or next likely relationship, or of a tendency to grandiosity on the part of the person speaking.
Like I said, I’ve said it, and thought it, many times. I hear it from other men hitting-the-wall-of-the-fact-that-women-are-people-with-motivations-of-their-own all the time, I also hear it from women friends who are conventionally unattractive.
It is a common delusion. My own grandiosity has shifted almost to the opposite. (True perspective is in sight, however)
Anyway, it’s not just women. Momma’s boys’ got it, too.
I tend to towards cynicism in relationships. I rarely fall in love, though I do love deeply.
I have been known to end relationships with people that have massive life issues… eating disorders, depression, social anxieties. Some people think that this is cold, particularly when I have been the wounded persons primary support system. Others lives are not mine to fix, and as much as it hurts to set those hard boundaries it means that I am a much happier healthier person because of it.
Learning that one’s love isn’t able to fix others is an important life lesson. If you have lots of love to give… give it in a non-traditional way. Become an activist, a mentor, a friend. Having love to give doesn’t entitle you to someone elses romantic love.
I think you are spot on with this post Hugo.
This post made me angry.
It reminded me of myself as a teenager.
You really can’t force someone to be happy.
it’s true. i did feel that way when i was much younger, and sometimes i feel that way nowadays. it really strikes me when i see gfs of mine link success with boyfriend despite the fact that these girls are academically and socially already successful. whenever i tend to get overly lonely, and start thinking about “loving some dude” i look at angelina jolie. it’s odd, but a successful, independent, strong woman like that inspires me to love myself and not worry so much about the future.
When a person says, “I have so much love to give”, does it mean overall love of all types, or just romantic love? I think the majority of humans have a need to love others in some way, or a natural instinct to love others, especially children. So the feeling of “having to give love” to someone, or even something, like a pet in many cases, is more common than not.
I never felt like I had “so much love to give”, although I’ve felt love many times, and in many ways and have craved “romantic” love from females many times (not just sex). There are very few people who don’t want to love something or be loved. The drive to help others in perceived need is very strong, and this is part of feeling love for others.
I have been in many discussions with other males about changing ourselves to be more “bad and needy” instead of “needed and nice”, to attract more females! Early on in our lives we realized that most of the “hot” chicks were going for the “bad boys in need of calming down”. We never did figure out what the attraction to this type of guy was, given that it was more logical to want a more stable and nice guy. It was uncertain to us if entertainment media was distorting romantic love, parenting was, or if it was just natural instinct? I am older now, so wiser, and don’t get angry about it anymore.
New examples may have to be taught to the young. Although we fight the entertainment industry on this, as it increasingly invades every part of life. It would be better to teach more often that it is good to want to give love, and it should be given, but “romantic” type love is not an end to happiness, only a very small part of it, and usually temporary. I think every person I have ever met has found this out eventually.
This is a fantastic post. I think this is a very real phenomena, however I think there are several different issues mention in your post which are hard to separate out.
People do have a strong driving desire to be ’special’ and feel that they are special. The I have so much love to give belief is, as you’ve said, something girls whose all other potential accomplishments or skills are suppressed, can indulge in believing in a socially approved way.
There is also the belief that a certain amount of love or support can change another person. Which you’ve addressed in a great way.
However, the I have so much love to give, idea is also often indulged in by people who believe that they have so much love to give to perfect person X if only they could find perfect person X. This is much indulged in by Nice Guys I think, they believe they could be the perfect boyfriend if only the perfect woman would behave the way she should and be theirs. Both women and men I think want to believe they can love deeply and strongly, and I think it is a human trait to have a lot of emotion inside and if you don’t have a really intimate relationship with family or someone and lots of people don’t you can feel like you just have all this emotional potential you haven’t shared yet. Personally I think the best way to judge how deeply you can love is by seeing how deeply you love the people you already love or have loved. Looking at reality instead of your imagination is usually a good move.
At the same time, I do believe that different people have a different capacity for love. Partly innate and partly formed by their live experiences I think it’s undeniable that some people give more of themselves to others then other people.
Other than body image, who is teaching young women to loathe themselves?
Is it possible that, for once, some nastiness isn’t being imposed on the innocent by a vicious and uncaring Other?
And, as regards body image, has any woman said she has a size 2 to give, as opposed to having love to give?
I believe there is a strong basic desire for human connection (emotional/romantic love) and some people only know destructive self-love. I don’t believe love changes anyone and you are so right about what love can, and cannot do. Hell trying to reason with someone who is demonstrating irrational behavior can’t and won’t change them. I could hardly fault anyone (girls/women) for strong socially approved conditioning. Love conquers all, love will change him/them/her, etc., and all the endless variations of this message, even the oft quoted, “It is better to give than to receive,” (NO, NO, NO…it is better/healthier to strike a balance between giving and receiving)….All these messages are variations of the same and what needs to change is the message.
Your post resonates with me too… “Long-term relationships have many benefits. One of the best of those benefits is that they tend to destroy any illusion one has about one’s own unique power to heal or change another person.” Anyone who has weathered a long-term relationship with a partner who suffers an addiction or terrible past or just difficult issues could attest to that.
“The greatest attribute that we have may well be our capacity to love, but that love, as powerful as it may seem to us, has its limits.” So true, yet I also believe that different people have a different capacity for love and some people give far more of themselves than others. I believe love is an action and a choice. It’s easy to be in love and a lot harder to act in a loving way. Great post, Hugo.
This was quite a good post, Hugo (in contrast with some of your posts on other topics where I vehemently disagree with one idea or another). Still, I think the whole “so much love to give” phenomenon is prevalent in young boys, too. It’s simple immaturity, nothing more. When I was in high school, and emphatically not part of the popular clique, I would bewail my lack of a girlfriend with exactly this self-pitying whine. If only the girls would “give me a chance” and recognize all of the fine qualities I possessed, not the least of which was some boundless capacity for unconditional love, they’d flock to me. As always, this kind of self-pity party is just an extension of self-absorption, rooted in basic immaturity. It just takes growing up to realize a) romantic love isn’t the panacea you think it is and b) no other person can possibly be the primary source of your happiness.
That is true, but YOU DO NEED LOVE TO BE HAPPY. I think many feminists would do well in remembering that.
Darn. Who had 2:05 p.m. on the “you feminists will all end up as lonely old crazy cat ladies” comment pool?
You did, Mythago. I’m sending the free box of Meow Mix now.
Awesome! Because, you know, my CAT will always love me.