Love is All
Why almost all dating advice is misguided
Reading relationship advice makes me sad. Almost every popular piece of advice treats romantic partners like business partners and assumes that they have separate interests. You see a lot of words like “sacrifice,” “work,” “compromise” and “negotiation.” Partners are encouraged to strong-arm one another into doing things they don’t want to do as part of some kind of exchange. Partners are assumed to be working at cross-purposes, and any conflict resolved by each partner making some kind of concession.
Truly loving relationships do not work that way. When you love someone on a deep, instinctual level, caring for them does not feel like work, sacrifice, or compromise. It feels like doing the thing you want most in the world. True love is empowering. When you love someone, the idea of asking that person to sacrifice for you is abhorrent. There is no negotiation because you are on the same team. You want the same thing - for everyone to be as happy and fulfilled as possible - and you naturally work creatively and collaboratively to make that happen.
When people ask me for relationship advice, my usual advice is just to love each other. If you don’t love each other on that level, figure out what you need to feel that kind of love and tell your partner. Then listen to them when they tell you what they need. If it’s something you’re prepared to do, do it. If not, then it’s probably not the relationship for you. But if you want a happy and fulfilling long-term relationship, the only reliable way is to love each other, and to love each other so much that your respective self-interests includes each other’s interests. Love each other so much that your well-being is dependent upon your partner’s well-being. Love each other so much that caring for your partner feels selfish.
Conflicts still happen in loving relationships, but they are usually misunderstandings rather than actual conflicts of interest. That’s why one piece of relationship advice that I agree with is to become an expert on your partner. Even the most loving partners can hurt each other if they don’t understand each other’s values, fears, and insecurities. If you’re having a conflict, one of the best ways to resolve it is to dig into why the issue matters to each partner. Usually, there is an underlying need or desire that isn’t always apparent from the surface level. Once both partners truly understand each other, the resolution is often obvious. In rare cases the resolution will be to break up or transition to a different type of relationship, but even then it can be done in the most loving way possible.
The other conflict that loving partners can have are disagreements about tactics. Even if partners agree on how they want the future to look, they can disagree on the best way to get there. That’s normal, and it can cause big problems, but it usually doesn’t strike at the heart of who a person is like other conflicts do. Working that sort of thing out is what rationality is for.
But most conflicts can be resolved just by loving each other. Love is the way.