The Case for Love

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"If you build a life with your relationship at the center, everything else gets pushed to the perimeter" (Hill, 2023).

In a provocative Atlantic article, seasoned journalist Faith Hill makes the case that there is often such a focus on love—in so many cultures—that relationships outside of primary romantic relationships often get pushed to the side in one's life. Hill argues that this pattern, which seems to be relatively common based on various data sources, has adverse effects on both individuals within relationships as well as on relationships themselves.

To be fair, her article hardly bashes the concept of love. To this point, she even writes, therein, that "...Finding love is a beautiful, lucky thing."

This all said, the main gist of her article focuses on what she calls the Love/Life Balance—which suggests from various angles that people who overly focus on their romantic relationships lose out on all kinds of other offerings in life, such as hobbies, non-romantic relationships, and more.

While I don't necessarily disagree fully with this point, as someone who has studied different facets of love empirically for decades, I wish to highlight why focusing on love actually has the capacity to lead to all kinds of positive life outcomes. We can think of this piece as something of a polite counter-response to Hill's well-written and well-researched article.

How Much Does Love Matter?

A great deal of literature in the behavioral sciences underscores the fact that having a truly loving relationship provides extraordinary benefits in life. Further, a great deal of literature, going back decades, suggests that love is an essential need that drives the broader human experience.

For instance, Abraham Maslow (1943), an iconic behavioral scientist, made the case that the need for love is one of the core needs that drives human behavior.

To support this point, consider a study of popular music conducted by Hobbs and Gallup (2011). This study examined the content of songs that rose high in the charts of various genres (rap, country, rock) across several years. This research found that more than 90% of popular songs, regardless of era or genre, clearly bear on reproductive messages—with the theme of love being a theme that emerges over and over again. Perhaps this is why the Beatles, who produced dozens of unabashed love songs (All You Need is Love; Eight Days a Week; And I Love Her; Something; Yesterday; P.S. I Love You; etc.), connected so deeply with so many people with their music.

I am a huge fan of the Rolling Stones, personally, but if you want to understand why the Beatles, at the end of the day (and regardless of the Stones' self-proclamations about being The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World), ended up really transcending time with their music—arguably, more so than have the Stones—think about the differential proportion of Beatles versus Stones songs that bear on the topic of love. It's very easy to think of Beatles songs related to love. But Satisfaction, Sympathy for the Devil, Dead Flowers, Gimme Shelter, etc., just don't tug at one's emotional love strings in the same way. Maybe the disproportionate attention given to the concept of love can help explain the extraordinary success of the Beatles and of other artists who have a knack for producing love songs. This proposition would certainly be consistent with the findings of Hobbs and Gallup (2011).

This is all to let alone the fact that renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher (1993) has, over decades, provided evidence that true love not only genuinely exists but that it can be observed in brain physiology. Love is a real thing!

From a totally different angle, renowned evolutionary behavioral scientist David Buss (2017) provides strong evidence that mutual love is, across gender, time, and geography, consistently one of the core features that people everywhere look for when it comes to finding the right mate.

When it comes to the human experience and happiness, to say that love is often over-emphasized would, based on so much data, perhaps be a bit misguided.

When Lennon and McCartney wrote that "Love is all there is," they may have been overstating the case. But based on what we know about the importance of love in the human experience, I'd say that their overstatement here was actually only slight. When it comes to being human, love matters a ton.

Love Is an Emotional Experience

When it comes to being human, we very-often have emotional experiences that do not match our cognitive or rational experiences (see Montgomery, 2010). If only people could easily and consistently control their emotions, life would be much easier. For instance, anger management would not be a thing if people could simply choose to not be angry. And the same goes for such negative experiences as depression and anxiety. As it turns out, humans are an incredibly emotional kind of creature. And it is quite often the case that our emotions, whether we like it or not, drive us to do things that the rational, cognitive parts of our minds would never dream of doing. This all is partly why life is so often interesting, complex, and difficult—while also beautiful.

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All the research on the nature of love paints this phenomenon as largely emotional in nature (see Acevedo et al., 2019). And it is largely for this reason that love makes people do all kinds of things that they might never expect of themselves. Love might drive someone to move across the country—or even across the globe—to be with that special someone—often regardless of what might be great fiscal or social costs.

Love is not always peaches and cream. In fact, it often drives people to experience such negative attributes as uncontrollable jealousy or hyper-controlling behavior within relationships (see Buss, 2017).

But love clearly has positive outcomes in our lives as well. True love not only gives one extraordinary joy and excitement, but it can also provide someone with a partner in life—turning two "I"s into a single powerful we. And it is without question that having a true, loyal ally and supporter can have an extraordinary amount of benefits in one's life.

Someone might get a lot out of his relationship with his pickleball buddies, but that all pales in comparison to what that same person might get out of a truly loving relationship. In a truly loving intimate relationship, one gets such wonderful life dividends as:

• Having at least one person who truly has your back at all times
• Having someone with whom you can share the most intimate details of your inner thoughts and feelings
• Having a cheerleader as you navigate the treacherous waters of life; having someone who validates your thoughts and feelings genuinely and consistently
• Being able to reap the benefits of nurturing the mind, body, and soul of someone whom you truly and deeply care about
• And more

Bottom Line

In her Atlantic article on the importance of a Love/Life Balance, expert journalist Faith Hill makes a strong case for not putting all of one's eggs into the basket of romantic love. While she makes some very good (and data-based) points, I think it's important for people to at least consider the flip side.

Love is, after all, an emotional experience. So simply deciding to spend less time and energy on one's love life is easier said than done. Further, love is, based on all kinds of data sources, a foundational human need that comes with all kinds of life benefits.

Our hearts yearn for it. Our Spotify playlists amplify it. And our efforts to find it can be nothing short of herculean.

Sure, the stuff outside of one's romantic love life matters. But to underestimate the importance of romantic love in life would be to miss a major part of the broader human experience.

There's a reason that love songs tend to top the charts. Because, with only little exaggeration, at the end of the day, love is all there is.

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This post is dedicated to my wife and love of my life, Shannon, who teaches me about the profound importance of love each and every day.