Is Love a Choice?

I’m on a fact-finding mission.

The question of what love really is has been in the air lately. I belong to the bell hooks school where love is an emotion and an action. In her book All About Love she says, “Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” With that in mind, I feel that we have control over who we fall in love with. We choose partners based on objectives and common interests.

Over the past month I’ve watched numerous shows and movies that give us the idea that we don’t have control over who we love. Some of my friends echo the same sentiment. Their relationships just simply happened.

Weigh in. Who or what shaped your idea about love and relationships? Did you simply fall in love or were you strategic in who you dated and loved?

Tipping the Scale of Love

I was privy to a conversation recently where it was believed that love, trust and commitment were not at the same level in a non-marital relationships as in marriages. It was also believed that to cheat on a partner was naughty rather than tragic if it were a husband or wife. It was later discussed that this was grounded in the idea that marriages are witnessed by God, family and the state. I understand that this is an idea that a person is doomed to moral, social and financial hell if the married relationship dissolves. Believe it or not the same is true for non-marital relationships. (I’m not going to get into common law marriages, etc. because it distracts from the topic at hand.)

To paraphrase Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender a great deal, God, family and the state create the ideologies of recognition, and it is that recognition that gives our existence weight. In other words, we live in a society that marginalizes non-marital relationships. Think back to the people in your social circles who give you the pity face when they find out that you are not headed down the aisle. This type of thinking is deeply ingrained in our everyday lives.

I’ve heard this argument before by my dad, who just turned 61. He married the woman who is his second wife because he didn’t think they would be together today if he hadn’t tied the knot. But this isn’t limited to older generations. The man who started this discussion is a 70’s baby (Gen X/Hip Hop Generation, if you will) with children of his own. And this isn’t limited to men; women believe it too. In this vein, marriage elevates one’s status in the eyes of society.

Love is an emotion and action, not a competition for recognition. Creating levels of love, trust and commitment means that we are putting limits on our capacity to be in healthy relationships. Where’s the love in that?

Colorblindess in Living Color

My ‘little black book’ reads like the registration at the United Nations. Growing up on a very diverse military base (rare) in central Texas and having parents who dated outside the color line made my life boundless. Seeing couples from different backgrounds (and their kids) is very much the norm for me. I’ve noticed that television has been making an attempt to show the same diversity, but I question it on many levels.

First, I question why it’s usually the mixed couples who seem to be the happiest. They have problems, but it’s usually connected to some external factor like car pooling, dinner reservations, or something just as trivial. Although we have made many strides since desegregation, we are not in a post-racial society. (Obama is the exception not the rule.) I’ve heard people question the relevance of mixed coupling wondering what the two have in common. This is rarely addressed in TV or film. To do so would add depth to the characters and storyline.

Second, where are the happy and healthy relationships with people from the same ethnic background? I was quite surprised that network television embarked on a relationship between two Chinese-American characters on Cashmere Mafia. Lucy Liu’s high-achieving and no-nonsense character was paired with Jack Yang’s, but not without any turmoil. The writers seemed to pencil in every possible conflict for the two to not have a good relationship. Ironically, unlike many shows, the storyline did include the problems that arise from their family’s expectations in a cultural context. The possibilities of watching this unfold further ended with their breakup.

White couples and Black and Latino couples tend to fall into stereotyped relationships. The latter struggle to make ends meet while the former struggle with the comfort of their middle class lives. Insert laugh track where applicable.

The media deals with race indirectly. They claim colorblindness hoping to erase all that we know about race relations. It’s a failed attempt at the suspension of disbelief. I don’t expect anything more from the droves of writers, producers, directors, and studio heads who pander to racist expectations. Do I want more? Damn straight! I’d rather see storylines that address what we see along with the history that’s behind it. It can be funny, dramatic or campy. We not only have to demand it, we need do it ourselves. The networks aren’t our only recourse.

Theoretically Speaking

I had lunch with a Dr. Ladson-Billings a few years ago and she told me that she was surprised that I liked theory. I’m taken aback at times when I find out that people (scholars) try to avoid theory. They tense up at the very sound of the word. Anyway, in my world theory makes the world go round.

Theory & Method in American Studies includes everything from Marxism to Post-colonial theory. More Marxism here.

Black American Feminisms: A Multidisciplinary Bibliography is an extensive bibliography of black American Feminist thought from across the disciplines

The basics/classics in Queer Theory, and much more exhaustive here.

And my new favorite, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy