Love

Definition

VIA: Love as a character strength refers to the degree to which you value close relationships with people, and contribute to that closeness in a warm and genuine way. It is reciprocal — about both loving others and being willing to accept love from others.

Wikipedia: Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love for food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment.

Cambridge Dictionary: To like another person very much and feel a strong emotional and often romantic attachment to them.

Here’s the thing songs and movies don’t always tell you: love, as a character strength, isn’t really about butterflies in your stomach. Psychologists distinguish it from kindness, which you can show to a stranger on the street. Love is specifically about your closest relationships — the people you’d call at 2am, the ones who know the messy parts of you and stick around anyway. Researchers describe several different flavors of it: the attachment between parent and child, the loyalty between friends, the passion between partners, and the compassion you feel for people beyond your inner circle.

One misconception worth clearing up: love isn’t just a feeling that happens to you. Plenty of psychologists, including Erich Fromm, have argued that mature love is closer to a skill — an active commitment you choose to practice, not just a spark you wait to feel. That’s actually good news. It means you can get better at it.

Love also isn’t only romantic. Some of the strongest evidence for its benefits comes from research on long-term friendships and family bonds: people in close, stable relationships tend to report higher life satisfaction and even better long-term health than people who are isolated. If you’re a teenager without a girlfriend, boyfriend, or partner right now, you are not “behind” on this strength — the friendships and family relationships you’re building are the real training ground for it.

Examples and Case Studies

John and Abigail Adams wrote each other more than 1,100 letters over five decades of marriage, sharing everything from politics to homesickness to jokes. Their correspondence shows love as partnership and constant communication, not just infatuation — they leaned on each other through years of separation during the American Revolution.

Fred Rogers built an entire television career, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, around one radical idea: that children deserve to be told directly, on camera, that they are loved exactly as they are. His quiet, consistent warmth became a model for unconditional acceptance that still shapes how educators think about caring for kids today.

Marie and Pierre Curie loved each other as scientific partners as much as spouses — sharing a lab, co-authoring discoveries, and pushing each other’s thinking. After Pierre’s death, Marie’s grief was public and enormous, but so was her determination to finish the work they’d started together, a reminder that love can outlast loss and still shape a life.

Malala Yousafzai and her father show a different kind of love: the fierce, protective bond between a parent and child who believed in the same cause. Her father’s decision to keep educating her despite threats, and her decision to keep speaking despite an assassination attempt, reflect a relationship built on mutual respect as much as affection.

Ordinary teenage friendships count too. Longitudinal psychology research on adolescents consistently finds that having even one or two close, trusted friends — not a huge social circle — is one of the strongest predictors of emotional wellbeing through the teenage years. You don’t need a legendary romance to be practicing this strength; you’re probably already doing it with your best friend.

Suggested Track

A track built around love shouldn’t centre on dating — that’s the version pop culture pushes, but it’s the narrowest slice of the strength. A more useful approach is to structure it around circles of connection: family, friendship, and community.

One format: spend a set period (a school term works well) focused on one circle at a time. Weeks 1–3 might be about strengthening a family relationship that’s gone a little quiet — a grandparent, a sibling you’ve drifted from. Weeks 4–6 shift to friendship: practicing vulnerability, showing up during someone else’s hard week, learning to repair an argument instead of ghosting it. Weeks 7–9 widen out to community — volunteering, mentoring a younger student, or simply learning the names and stories of people you see every day but don’t really know.

A second, faster-moving format works well for a mentor-led group: pair participants up for a single “connection project” — like a shared meal cooked for family, or a letter-writing exchange with a grandparent — and debrief as a group afterward about what felt awkward, what felt good, and what they’d want to repeat.

Literature, Art and Media

Books:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green — a teen love story that doesn’t flinch from mortality, showing love as something chosen even when it’s guaranteed to hurt.
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell — first love between two outsiders, told with unusual honesty about class, family, and self-worth.
• Heartstopper by Alice Oseman — a graphic novel series about queer teen love that’s gentle, funny, and grounded in friendship as much as romance.
• The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm — a short, accessible classic (written for adults, but very readable for older teens) arguing that love is a practice and discipline, not just a feeling.

Visual Art:

• The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1907–1908) — one of the most recognized images of romantic love in Western art, all gold leaf and intertwined figures, on display at the Belvedere in Vienna.

Podcasts:

• Modern Love (New York Times) — short, real personal essays about love in all its forms, read aloud; a good entry point since episodes rarely run long.
• On Purpose with Jay Shetty — conversations with guests (from therapists to celebrities) about building trust and connection in relationships.

TED Lectures:

• A better way to talk about love — Mandy Len Catron. Explores how the metaphors we use for love (falling, being struck, burning) shape how we experience it.
• The science of falling in love — Shannon Odell. A clear, short breakdown of what’s happening in the brain when you fall for someone — great for the curious/skeptical teen.
• The difference between healthy and unhealthy love — Katie Hood. Names concrete warning signs across romantic, family, and friend relationships, and frames loving well as a learnable skill.

Movies:

• The Fault in Our Stars (2014) — teen romance that treats young love as serious and consequential rather than trivial.
• Love and Basketball (2000) — follows two childhood friends into adulthood as their romantic and athletic ambitions collide, showing love that has to compete with ambition.
• Call Me by Your Name (2017) — a delicately shot first-love story set over one Italian summer; mature themes make this best suited to older teens.

Mentors

To be completed by program coordinator.

Events

Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (Sydney, every March) turns love and pride into a 17-day city-wide celebration, including a parade with thousands of participants — a striking example of love expressed publicly and collectively rather than privately.

Places

Uluru, in the heart of the Australian outback, is a sacred site for its Traditional Owners, the Anangu people, and is often described by visitors as a place that deepens their connection to family, culture, and the people they’ve brought along to see it.

Love lock bridges — a tradition that began in Serbia and spread worldwide (with local versions that have popped up on bridges in Canberra and Melbourne) — give people a physical, public way to mark a relationship: a lock is attached and the key thrown away, a small ritual for something that’s hard to put into words.

Your own grandparents’ or extended family’s home — sounds unglamorous, but family psychologists consistently point to time spent with older relatives as one of the most underrated ways teenagers build a durable sense of belonging.

Experiences

Write and send an actual letter — not a text — to someone you love but rarely tell.

Cook a meal for your family from scratch then dine with no phones at the table. Sharing food you made yourself is one of the oldest and most universal ways humans express care for each other.

Volunteer somewhere that puts you in regular contact with the same people over time — a soup kitchen, an aged care home, an animal shelter — rather than a one-off event. Repetition is what turns a nice gesture into an actual relationship.

Start a “gratitude check-in” with a close friend: once a week, each of you names one specific thing the other did that you appreciated. It sounds small, but naming things out loud is what keeps a friendship from running on autopilot.

Challenges

The Reconnection Letter

• Pick one person you love but haven’t properly talked to in a while — a grandparent, a cousin, an old friend.
• Write them a real letter (handwritten if you can) that includes one specific memory of them and one thing you appreciate about who they are.
• Send it without expecting anything back. The point is the act of expressing it, not the reply.

48 Hours of Undivided Attention

• Choose one person you live with or see daily.
• For two days, whenever you’re with them, put your phone away and give them full attention — no scrolling mid-conversation.
• At the end, ask them (and yourself) whether they noticed a difference, and write down what you noticed.

The Repair Conversation

• Think of a small unresolved tension with someone you care about — not a huge fight, just something that’s been sitting there.
• Initiate a short, calm conversation where you say one honest thing about how you felt, and ask how they felt.
• Practice ending the conversation with something appreciative, even if you don’t fully resolve the issue.

Family Interview Project

• Interview an older family member about their own life, especially the people they’ve loved most and what they learned.
• Record it (audio is fine) or take detailed notes.
• Share one thing you learned with the rest of your family or with your mentor group.