Part II – The Flames and Shadows of Romantic Love

The following is Part II of a three-part blog post. Look for Part III next Sunday.

At first, I thought I was doing something rebellious and new by refusing to pursue romantic love, by following my Disney-themed dream instead of my hormones. I even thought of myself as cool and nonconformist as I spurned the notion of romantic love, thinking that what Allison and I experienced was better. After calming down—and humbling myself a little bit—I decided that the love Allison and I share wasn’t necessarily better, just different. And it definitely wasn’t new or nonconformist. Through my studies, I’ve learned that marrying for reasons other than romantic love is pretty vintage—and I’m not talking exclusively about loveless marriages either. Yes, romantic love has been around for a long time as well, but it was never the top reason to get married like it is now (in Western culture, at least). While I haven’t had nearly as much time to research the topic as many of today’s professional anthropologists, I’ll try to provide a brief—and therefore limited—history of romantic love.

Some of the earliest records of romantic love come, as can be expected, from ancient Greco-Roman sources. Though affairs were common amongst upper class citizens, the lovesickness so associated with romantic love was considered a form of madness, and even fondness between husband and wife was frowned upon (Coontz, 2005, p. 16). As backwards as it may seem, extramarital affairs were even considered the highest form of love in twelfth and thirteenth century aristocracies (p. 16). Marriage, to them, was a political and economic pursuit—love just wasn’t a player. In various cultures, the upper classes usually used marriage to hoard wealth and resources, only marrying when one stood to gain something by it (p. 6).

Marriage in the lower classes was a bit different, but love was seldom the main reason to get married. Consistently, and across cultures, marriage in the lower classes “spoke to the needs of the larger group. It converted strangers into relatives and extended cooperative relations beyond the immediate family or small band by creating far-flung networks of in-laws” (Coontz, 2005, p. 6). Into the Middle Ages, lower class marriage was largely utilitarian. Many lower class people probably considered love in marriage a bonus, but few could afford the luxury of seeking it out. Potential spouses would consider each other’s skills and assets as much as they would consider personality and attractiveness (p. 6). Back then, husband and wife wouldn’t pursue separate careers; they became business partners, and courting resembled a job interview much more than it does today.

Even though romantic love was never necessary for marriage until very recently, so many people in Western culture are convinced that it’s the only way to go. Unfortunately, I know this firsthand. When Allison and I were engaged, we decided to share my unconventional experience of being both gay and Mormon with the rest of the world through the Voices of Hope Project (Marston, 2014). While the vast majority of responses were positive, there were many instances where people we had never met came out of the woodwork to tell us that our love wasn’t real, that our marriage was doomed, and that I needed to “be true to myself.” (Because they, complete strangers, knew me so well that they knew I wasn’t being true to myself.) These people were convinced that a gay man couldn’t possibly love a woman. They told us our marriage, without romantic love, would at best be a dreary middle school shuffle—not the Disney waltz I dreamed of. They regarded romantic love as the most necessary thing for a happy and successful marriage.

Luckily for us, we didn’t give a sizzling sassafras about what they said. While romantic love is great, I certainly wouldn’t call it necessary for a happy marriage. I’m not even mad; I just find it ironic that the people so convinced that Allison and I were ignorant could be so ignorant to the world around them.

There are still some cultures today in which romantic love is definitely not the norm. It’s not just because they haven’t been “enlightened” yet—as my ethnocentric antagonists might assume. Romantic love simply is not the global ideal. Many modern, African lower and middle class communities “consider too much love between husband and wife … disruptive because it encourages the couple to withdraw from the wider web of dependence that makes the society work” (Coontz, 2005, p. 18). Women caught in the throng of romantic love will often deny loving their husbands when asked, since it’s considered inappropriate. So when you get down to it, these marriages may also be loveless—it’s hard to know.

In India, however, this is the formula: “First we marry, then we fall in love” (Coontz, 2005, p. 18). Most marriages in India are still arranged, so there’s no chance for the passionate Western romance culminating in a fairytale wedding. But love still exists in many Eastern marriages—it just isn’t the romantic love we Westerners have put on a pedestal. Johnson, who has a particular fondness for Eastern cultures, explains:

In Eastern cultures, like those of India or Japan, we find that married couples love each other with great warmth, often with a stability and devotion that puts us to shame. But their love is not “romantic love” as we know it. They don’t impose the same ideals on their relationships, nor do they impose such impossible demands and expectations on each other as we do. (1983, p. xi).

Easterners seem to be able to love their spouses and to find fulfillment in their marriages without the nebulous and complicated “romantic love” that we, as Westerners, are used to. When you stop and consider it, romantic love as we know it hasn’t even been the norm in the West for very long, so it’s odd that we’re “used to” it in the first place.

Amid utilitarian marriages, romantic love first became idealized in Western society in the Middle Ages as “courtly love,” to be practiced mainly between knights and ladies of the court (Johnson, 1983, p. xiii). Here is likely where one romantic archetype was first introduced: the pursuing male and the pursued female. This courtly love wasn’t quite romantic love as we know it though; it was characterized by a worshipful and chaste obsession, and often the lady would be married to another man. The knight and lady would treat each other as divine, so they believed that sex, a base and worldly desire, was unfit for their transcendental love experience (p. 46)—something probably no Westerner would agree with today. I’m not sure how much courtly love was actually practiced in the Middle Ages, since it was so impractical, but it was certainly the ideal.

After its courtly phase, romantic love evolved into a sort of poetic love—the type of love that pervaded poetry in the Renaissance. Poetic love is largely characterized by conflict, specifically the conflict the poet feels as he struggles between his earthly, romantic passions and his desire for a higher, more spiritual love experience. As a Christian that believes marriage continues in the Resurrection, I personally cannot identify very well with these Renaissance poets, since I believe there’s something divine about these bodies and the emotions they experience. Much of the rest of Christianity, from what I understand, believes that bodily experiences are inherently baser than spiritual ones—hence the struggle of the Christian Renaissance poets.

Petrarch, a Renaissance poet, gives us a good example of this conflicting, poetic love in his sonnets for Laura.

If my life find strength enough to fight
the grievous battle of each passing day,
that I may meet your gaze, years from today,
lady, when your eyes have lost their light,
and when your golden curls have turned to white,
and vanished are your wreaths and green array,
and when your youthful hue has fled away,
whose beauty makes me tremble in its sight,
perhaps then Love will overcome my fears
enough that I may let my secret rise
and tell you what I’ve suffered all these years;
and if no flame be kindled in your eyes,
at least I may be granted for my tears
the comfort of a few belated sighs. (Shore, 1987, p. 17).

Since, in this sonnet, Petrarch has yet to even admit his secret love to Laura, we can see the remnants of courtly love in his poetic love. He highlights and idealizes her beauty without seeming to know her personally, as was seen in courtly love, but we see poetic love in how he centers mostly on his own struggle. Petrarch talks about his fight, his fears, his suffering, his comfort—but never hers. Laura is kept at a distance—chaste, beautiful, and idealized. Petrarch even calls her a “goddess” in a later sonnet (p. 99), and hopes that she’ll be there to guide him into heaven (p. 101). This is poetic love at its finest.

Still, before the seventeenth century, most Christian writings only used the word “love” to refer to God or neighbor, not spouse (Coontz, 2005, p. 21). Poetic, romantic love still wasn’t the norm for the masses, like it is today—the lower classes didn’t have the luxury of dancing to the beat of romance. However, in the seventeenth century, activities that typically took place in the “extended household,” such as “eating, drinking, toilet, and sleeping,” began to take place “within the much narrower confines of what might be called the ‘marital space’” (Vernon, 2010). Married couples became much more exclusive not only at home, but in the way they displayed affection as well.

The bodily intimacy … which formerly marked the spiritual intimacy of friendship now became more narrowly associated with the realm of husband and wife. Friendship was being pushed out to the margins of public life, and marriage was taking its place as one of the only forms of vowed kinship that society would recognize. (Hill, 2015, p. 39).

This is where we see the beginning of some of today’s stereotypically romantic displays. For example, before this shift, it was considered normal for two close male friends to share a bed, but today such a practice would be labeled romantic and assumed sexual in nature.

In the eighteenth century, Western culture tipped even further when it experienced a radical shift in thinking called the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment, romantic love “overwhelmed our collective psyche and permanently altered our view of the world” (Johnson, 1983, p. xiii-xiv). Love became the most important part of a marriage, and young people were now free to choose whomever they wanted to marry, when before their marriages were typically arranged by family members (Coontz, 2005, p. 5). Marriage used to be considered far too important to be left to the decision of young people, especially if that decision would be based on something as transitory as romance. Now Western civilization was faced with the challenge of marrying for love, but marrying stably as well. As Coontz puts it, “For the next 150 years, societies struggled to strike the right balance between the goal of finding happiness in marriage and the preservation of limits that would keep people from leaving a marriage that didn’t fulfill their expectations for love” (p. 5). In other words, with the right implementation of romantic love, marriage became a lot happier, but much less stable.

Despite the instability of romantic love, marrying for love certainly had its benefits. After the Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century, marriage for love began to erode social boundaries. Marriage was “increasingly defined as a private agreement with public consequences, rather than as a public institution whose roles and duties were rigidly determined by the family’s place in the social hierarchy” (Coontz, 2005, p. 147). There wasn’t such an impassible line between the social classes anymore. Another benefit was that male dominance in the household was drastically curbed, now that women had more freedom in choosing their husbands. Women’s rights began to develop because marital decisions were now founded on love and reason, not on the husband’s will alone (p. 149).

Then, in the early twentieth century, Western romantic love took on a heavier mantel of exclusivity. Unfortunately, same-sex friendships declined to the shallow levels that are commonly seen today, and romantic partners became a priority higher even than family (Coontz, 2005, p. 207). By the mid-twentieth century, industry had advanced so much in North America and Western Europe that a family could thrive on a single spouse’s income, and the “male breadwinner” archetype was introduced into romantic love. Soon after this, as must naturally follow the right to choose whom to marry, people began to demand the right to divorce (p. 8). Women were winning increasingly more rights, and this “male breadwinner” business just wasn’t cutting it for them. Thus, romantic love simultaneously made Western marriage more fair and fulfilling, as well as more optional and fragile (p. 301).

And that brings us to romantic love as we know it. Our culture’s ideal today is that marriage be based on romantic love, an “intense, profound love,” and that “a couple should maintain their ardor until death do them part” (Coontz, 2005, p. 15). Just like the memory of my Disney dream, romantic love has been reimagined and reformed with every new thinker until becoming what it is today. I do think there are a lot of helpful and fun pieces to today’s version of romance—for example, Allison and I have fun going on dates, giving each other things, and being close—but there are also many unrealistic and harmful expectations in today’s ideal of romantic love. A good example of current cultural expectations surrounding romantic love is seen in Taylor Swift’s hit single, “Wildest Dreams”:

Say you'll remember me standing in a nice dress,
Staring at the sunset, babe
Red lips and rosy cheeks
Say you'll see me again
Even if it's just in your wildest dreams …
You see me in hindsight
Tangled up with you all night
Burning it down
Someday when you leave me
I bet these memories
Follow you around. (Swift, 2014).

Here, Swift doesn’t even pretend that this passionate romance will lead to a committed relationship. Her idea of romantic love is based on the desire to be deified by her lover—she wants him to think of her as an ideal, not a person. She defines romantic love as treating another person as deity, coupled with sexual and passionate encounters. Johnson sums up this harmful perception of romantic love when he says that romance is egotistical, “For romance is not a love that is directed at another human being; the passion of romance is always directed at our own projections, our own expectations, our own fantasies” (1983, p. 193).

I agree that this can be the case—that romantic love can be selfish, obsessed with who we want a person to be instead of focused on who that person actually is. That is the facet of romantic love that ruins relationships, the reason why knights and ladies kept their distance, unwilling to let the other reveal him- or herself as human. This telling of romantic love certainly coincides with the physiological approach as well: that romance is just a neurochemical drug addiction designed to propagate the species.

But this can’t be everything. Where does the dancing come in? The roses? The gifts and acts of kindness? I see those things all the time—I’ve done them myself with Allison! That can’t all just be a ruse to get the other person to idealize you. So what is it?

As it turns out, it’s the real love hiding behind romantic love.

References

Bartels, A., & Zeki, S. (2000). The neural basis of romantic love. Neuroreport 11, 3829–34.

Carter, C. S., DeVries, A., Taymans, S. E., Roberts, R. L., Williams, J. R., & Getz, L. L. (1997). Peptides, steroids, and pair bonding. In C. S. Carter, I. I. Lederhendler, and B. Kirkpatrick (eds.), The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy or how love conquered marriage. New York: Penguin Group.

Fisher, H., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Romantic love: An fRMI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. The Journal of Comparative Neurology 493, 58–62.

Fisher, H. (2006). The drive to love: The neural mechanism for mate selection. In R. J. Sternberg and K. Weis (Eds.), The new psychology of love (2nd ed.). London: Yale University Press.

Griffiths, P. (October 17, 2006). Talking with Ahmedinejad. Christian Century, 8–9.

Hill, W. (2015). Spiritual friendship: Finding love in the church as a celibate gay Christian. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

Johnson, R. A. (1983). We: Understanding the psychology of romantic love. New York: HarperCollins.

Lewis, C. S. (1960). The four loves: The much beloved exploration of the nature of love. New York: Harcourt.

Marazziti, D., Akiskal, H. S., Rossi, A., & Cassano, G. B. (1999). Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love. Psychological Medicine 29(3), 741–5.

Marston, E., & Tenney, A. (2014). Ethan Marston and Allison Tenney [video interview]. Voices of Hope. Retrieved from http://ldsvoicesofhope.org/voice.php?v=65#.VkE9CfmrTIU

O’Callaghan, P. D. (2002). The feast of friendship. Wichita: Eighth Day Press.

Paul, M. (2012). Your memory is like the telephone game: Each time you recall an event, your brain distorts it [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/09/your-memory-is-like-the-telephone-game.html

Shore, M. (1987). For love of Laura: Poetry of Petrarch. Dexter, MI: Marion Shore.

Swift, T., Martin, M., & Schuster, K. J. (2014). Wildest dreams [Recorded by Taylor Swift]. On 1989 [mp4]. Los Angeles, CA: Big Machine.

Van Goozen, S. H., Wiegant, V. M., Endert, E., Helmond, F. A., & Van de Poll, N. E. (1997). Psychoendocrinological assessment of the menstrual cycle: The relationship between hormones, sexuality, and mood. Archives of Sexual Behavior 26(4), 359–82.

Vernon, M. (2010). The meaning of friendship. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Williams, C. A. (2012). Reading Roman friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part I – The Flames and Shadows of Romantic Love

The following is Part I of a three-part blog post. Look for Part II next Sunday.

I’ve read that every time you remember something, you’re really only remembering the details from the last time you remembered it—the specifics can change over time, like some mental game of telephone (Paul, 2012). I guess that means I can’t really trust this memory, as it’s one of my earliest, but I’ll tell you about it anyway.

I had a dream when I was three years old. In it, I reenacted the ballroom dance scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with Suzannah Rotz, a girl my mom babysat every now and then (and therefore the love of my life). I remember the aerial views, the rose-colored lights, the graceful sweeping motions of her dress, and—most of all—an almost tangible sense of romance. Now, over 20 years later, that dream has been reduced to a mere idea—a shadow. I couldn’t tell you how much of that dream was real and how much of it I’ve added throughout my life—I don’t know how it’s been shaped by my experiences and my expectations. I don’t even know for sure if the dream was a response to Beauty and the Beast or if it was something that originated within me.

I used to feel the same way about romantic love.

I feel like I’ve always had a good grasp on what love is, but romantic love? It’s hard to really define it, or know what makes it different from love in general. Everyone seems to have their own opinion, however—all fraught with generalizations, rosy expectations, grandiose gestures, and an overwhelming sort of passion. Most people can’t define romantic love, or even pinpoint its cause or origin, but everyone has their own experience to share. But is that experience really their own, or is it the product of their circumstances? What is romantic love?

Jungian psychotherapist Robert A. Johnson says that Western culture now regards romantic love as it once regarded deity: with spiritual fervor and mystery (1983, p. 55). Because romantic love has become the center of so many peoples’ spirituality, many resist any attempt to explain or rationalize it. Romantic love has become an idealized experience that nobody wants to quantify for fear of losing their “happily ever after.”

Whether or not they dance around a hard definition, we can still catch a glimpse of how individuals in our society define romantic love by looking at their language and behavior surrounding romantic relationships. As Johnson puts it,

In our culture people use the phrase, “romantic love,” indiscriminately to refer to almost any attraction between man and woman. If a couple is having a sexual affair, people will say they are “romantically involved.” If a man and a woman love each other and plan to marry, people will say it is a “romance.”… Or a woman will say, “I wish my husband would be more romantic.” But what she actually means is that her husband should be more attentive, more thoughtful, and show more feeling. … We assume that if it is love, it must be “romance,” and if it is romance, it must be “love.” (1983, p. 43-4).

I think it’s obviously a problem when, as a culture, we use the same term for sexual affairs as for loving, committed relationships—and for behaviors that aren’t even inherently “romantic.” Can we really call these “romantic” thoughts and behaviors “love”—the same word we use for the bond a mother has for her child? Or is romance a category of its own? As a culture, we may want to make a distinction here. If we’re not even sure how to recognize what we’re looking for, finding someone to love becomes an insanely difficult task.

In the spring of 2014 I took on that task as I debated over whether or not I had found the love of my life. I was dating a girl named Allison Tenney (sorry, Suzannah). I knew that I loved her even a month into the relationship, but was I in love with her? Did I feel romantic feelings for her? As the relationship progressed, I always enjoyed being around her, and I could see her as a potential wife, but was I in love with her? Most guys probably could have answered that easier than I could, referring to physical symptoms like butterflies in the stomach, that “warm glowing” feeling, the insane desire to kiss her—whatever. But I just didn’t get that.

I, as a man who is remarkably gay, couldn’t rely on my physiology to make that decision for me.

It seems like most people rely on their senses and their attractions to determine whether or not they’re “in love.” Many scientists familiar with neurochemistry and the inner workings of the brain would agree, arguing that romantic love is a purely physiological experience. Dr. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the biology of love and attraction, describes romantic love as one of three interrelated motivation systems that drive mammals to mate (the other two are the sex drive and attachment) (2006, p. 89). Romantic love in other mammals is classified as “attraction,” which is characterized by “increased energy, focused attention on a specific mate, obsessive following, affiliative gestures, possessive mate-guarding, and motivation to win a preferred mating partner” (p. 90). In various MRI (brain scan) studies held by Fisher and her colleagues, individuals who reported to be “madly in love” displayed a lot activity in their right ventral tegmental area (a fancy name for “this part of the brain”) when shown images of their beloved (p. 91). This area of the brain is associated with high dopamine production.

Dopamine is sort of like the doggy treat of neurochemicals—the brain releases the hormone to reward good behavior. The brain definitely considers furthering the species (mating) good behavior, so when you see or spend time with a potential mate, you are essentially on drugs. You think I’m kidding? Dopamine activity is “associated with ecstasy, intense energy, sleeplessness, mood swings, emotional dependence, and craving” (Fisher, 2006, p. 92), all of which are experienced in romantic love—and drug addiction.

Though dopamine is the main culprit, people under the influence of romantic love may also experience other neurochemical changes. Increased testosterone, for instance, is associated with feelings of lust in both men and women (Van Goozen, et al., 1997). Increased norepinephrine—a hormone similar to adrenaline—gives symptoms of “a pounding heart, elevated blood pressure, and other physiological responses” (Fisher, 2006, p. 92). In a comparison of an OCD group, a recently in-love group, and a control group, researchers found that both the OCD group and the recently in-love group exhibited decreased serotonin, another hormone which “most likely contributes to the lover’s obsessive thinking and impulsivity” (Marazziti, et al., 1999).

Though this seems like an intense addiction, physiological effects of romantic love seem to be fleeting. In a study by Bartels and Zeki, participants had been “truly, deeply, and madly in love” for over a year longer than the participants in Fisher’s study (2000, p. 3829). Their love also registered as less intense than that of Fisher’s participants, who took the same survey (Fisher, et al., 2005, p. 60). In their own supplementary study, Fisher and her associates discovered that individuals who have been in love longer show love activity in different areas of the brain than their honeymooning counterparts—areas that are associated with attachment behaviors in other mammals (p. 60). So maybe romantic love isn’t the only thing couples can experience. Perhaps romantic love can eventually evolve into something more lasting.

Long story short, romantic love is at least initially supposed to feel like being on drugs, and I wasn’t getting any of that with Allison. Maybe my brain just isn’t “programmed” that way. But is physiology all there is to romantic love? Were my options for an eternal companion based solely on my neurochemistry? I’m a gay man, but I had always dreamed of marrying a woman (literally), and as a member of the LDS (Mormon) Church I believed that only a marriage between a man and woman can last forever. That made it especially frustrating when I felt for other men the sorts of things I wanted to feel for Allison. How could I ever marry Allison when I didn’t feel in love with her? Was “just love,” without the excessive dopamine, enough? Was it even real?

Around the same time that I grappled with those questions, Allison and I became very close friends with a few other men who also experience same-sex attraction. Since we all were LDS, they also believed that marriage could only be between a man and a woman in order to be eternal. Because of this, they had also tried dating girls in the past—though to varying levels of success. I was able to share with them my hopes and my frustrations, and, for the first time in a long time, I felt completely open and authentic. I loved these men deeply, and I loved that fact as much as I was terrified by it.

I soon found myself praying some interesting prayers: Please help me to express my love appropriately. Please bless my relationships to be what you want them to be. I was terrified of falling in love with these amazing men, and in contrast I wanted desperately to fall in love with Allison. I thought that if I fell in love with one of my friends, I would be helpless to that love, and that I would abandon all of the goals and values that I held dear. I was caught up in the mysticism of romantic love—a product of my culture. To me, romantic love was some mysterious force that happened whenever you grew too close to someone, and I had no control in the matter. I thought that if I did fall in love with one of my friends, it would ruin our friendship forever.

Left and right, movies, songs, and books were telling me how I was supposed to love Allison and how I was supposed to love my friends, and I was tired of it. Eventually I learned that, as Wesley Hill put it, “You can’t very well commit yourself to pursuing chaste same-sex friendship as a gay Christian and expect that romantic, erotic feelings won’t, somehow, be involved in the pursuit” (2015, p. 76). Maybe romantic love and general, friendly love weren’t as cut-and-dry as I was trying to make them out to be. Besides, I couldn’t very well be expected to follow Christ’s admonition to “love one another” (John 13:34, King James Version) when I was trying hard not to care “too much” for someone. I decided that I shouldn’t hold back from loving my friends because I was afraid of falling in love with them—I’d deal with that if and when it happened. I was tired of being afraid of the nebulous notion of romantic love. I was going to love as God and I saw fit, not as I was expected to by the culture that surrounded me.

At the top of a roller coaster in early July, I asked Allison to marry me.

She said “yes.”

References

Bartels, A., & Zeki, S. (2000). The neural basis of romantic love. Neuroreport 11, 3829–34.

Carter, C. S., DeVries, A., Taymans, S. E., Roberts, R. L., Williams, J. R., & Getz, L. L. (1997). Peptides, steroids, and pair bonding. In C. S. Carter, I. I. Lederhendler, and B. Kirkpatrick (eds.), The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy or how love conquered marriage. New York: Penguin Group.

Fisher, H., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Romantic love: An fRMI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. The Journal of Comparative Neurology 493, 58–62.

Fisher, H. (2006). The drive to love: The neural mechanism for mate selection. In R. J. Sternberg and K. Weis (Eds.), The new psychology of love (2nd ed.). London: Yale University Press.

Griffiths, P. (October 17, 2006). Talking with Ahmedinejad. Christian Century, 8–9.

Hill, W. (2015). Spiritual friendship: Finding love in the church as a celibate gay Christian. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

Johnson, R. A. (1983). We: Understanding the psychology of romantic love. New York: HarperCollins.

Lewis, C. S. (1960). The four loves: The much beloved exploration of the nature of love. New York: Harcourt.

Marazziti, D., Akiskal, H. S., Rossi, A., & Cassano, G. B. (1999). Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love. Psychological Medicine 29(3), 741–5.

Marston, E., & Tenney, A. (2014). Ethan Marston and Allison Tenney [video interview]. Voices of Hope. Retrieved from http://ldsvoicesofhope.org/voice.php?v=65#.VkE9CfmrTIU

O’Callaghan, P. D. (2002). The feast of friendship. Wichita: Eighth Day Press.

Paul, M. (2012). Your memory is like the telephone game: Each time you recall an event, your brain distorts it [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/09/your-memory-is-like-the-telephone-game.html

Shore, M. (1987). For love of Laura: Poetry of Petrarch. Dexter, MI: Marion Shore.

Swift, T., Martin, M., & Schuster, K. J. (2014). Wildest dreams [Recorded by Taylor Swift]. On 1989 [mp4]. Los Angeles, CA: Big Machine.

Van Goozen, S. H., Wiegant, V. M., Endert, E., Helmond, F. A., & Van de Poll, N. E. (1997). Psychoendocrinological assessment of the menstrual cycle: The relationship between hormones, sexuality, and mood. Archives of Sexual Behavior 26(4), 359–82.

Vernon, M. (2010). The meaning of friendship. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Williams, C. A. (2012). Reading Roman friendship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

I'm Totes Gay: Celebrating the One-Year Anniversary of Our Voices of Hope Video

One year ago today, Allie and I made our debut in a video for the Voices of Hope Project. Even though most of my friends already knew I was gay at this point, the video was still the absolute largest coming-out event I had ever done, reaching tens of thousands of people. Below are the video highlights, for those of you who missed it. (Some of my opinions have changed slightly since this video was released, but it still gives a good snapshot of my life.)

(Follow these links to watch our full interview, to read Allie's essay or my essay, or to learn about other voices from the project.)


Since originally going public in August of 2014, I've learned that "coming out" isn't a singular event, but an ongoing process. I'm constantly meeting new people, so I'm constantly bringing people into my life who missed last year's reveal. While I have gotten more comfortable with sharing this part of me with others, the fear of rejection is always there in some form or another. That's why it's taken me this long to come out to my ward. (I'm posting this on my ward's Facebook page, as well as other places).

(Before you ask, yes, I love my wife very much, and yes, she really is pregnant, and yes, it is my child. You see, I experience something called secondary sexual attraction for my wife, but my attraction for men is definitely primary—I'm totes gay.)

If you're a member of my ward and reading this, there's something you need to understand before I go on: that fear of rejection I mentioned earlier. I'm sure all of us—gay, straight, or anything else—have experienced that feeling of "If they knew x about me, then they wouldn't like me." For me, that x is my being gay, and the fear of rejection has been reinforced throughout my life by bullying, passive comments, and even blatant homophobia. And despite clarifications by the Brethren, many people in the LDS Church still think that sexuality is a choice—they still treat the LGBTQ+ community like a leper colony.

So, even though I have legitimate reasons not to come out to our ward, I've consistently felt that it's what God wants me to do. I want to do His will. I want to be an example and a resource whenever you, your family members, or your children have questions about what it means to be Mormon and gay. I want to see as I am seen, and know as I am known (D&C 76:94). I want to live as authentically as possible within my ward family.

I do not want this to hurt how you, fellow wardies, interact with me. I don't want any guys in the ward to wonder if I think they're "hot." I don't want them to think that, simply by being in their presence, I'll somehow become infatuated with them. I don't want them to treat me like a woman, erroneously thinking that gay men and straight women are the same thing. I don't want mothers or fathers in the ward to be afraid of letting me near their children (a surprising number of people don't know the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia).

So—if you are a member of my ward—surprise!!! You didn't escape "the gay" by going to a married student ward! You're surrounded, and that doesn't have to terrify you.

How Scientists Are Withholding Information from the Public

The following is something that frustrates me:

This week in my nutritional biochemistry class, we were required to write research papers and complete peer reviews of each others' papers. It scares me that, in this senior capstone class, my peers are still making rookie writing mistakes like using huge, redundant phrases where one word would do, or by misplacing commas of all things.

"But Ethan," you might say, "they're science majors! They aren't studying writing on the side like you are!"

"True," I would respond, "but shut up I'm still talking."

Many science majors, after graduating, inevitably will go on to do research in their field. And what do they do after that? They write scientific papers and get their research published. This means that they'll be writing fairly frequently, assuming they don't get fired. If they're going to be writing so much, shouldn't they be trained in writing?

Unfortunately, many universities don't require much in the way of training for these future writers. For most science majors, BYU itself only requires an additional 3 credit hours of advanced written communication after the freshman writing class—and its science-specific writing class is only recommended, so science majors may not even take it.

"So they suck at writing—what does it matter?" you might ask.

"It matters to who reads their writing," I'd say. "Now stop interrupting me."

Obviously I have to read sucky science writing, along with other science majors. Fortunately I've learned how to dissect relevant information from scientific articles ever since I began studying nutrition. But, even though I can do it, it still annoys me. Besides, science majors aren't the ones who are being hurt by this—unless you count the dead brain cells we used up trying to make sense of it all. You see, we still actually learn this cryptic information.

Poor science writing really ends up hurting the general public.

The general public doesn't know how to dissect relevant information out of these scientific articles like I do. Even if science writers had perfect grammar, they still use a lot of jargon and technical terms, simply making scientific writing inaccessible to the public. This is a problem (1) because the public won't be able to understand cutting-edge research that pertains to them, and (2) because poor writing leaves them ignorant and frustrated with scientists. I think it's obvious why my first point is a problem, especially when it comes to the health sciences, but let me explain my second point a little further.

Typically, scientists write for other scientists. They don't bother explaining things in terms the layman could understand, and even if they did, they often write in such an aesthetically confounding way that readers are hard-pressed to find any glimmer of meaning. Take this passage as an example:

"An intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test was performed in the overnight fasted offspring by administering glucose (250g/l) intraperitoneally as a bolus, at a dose of 1g/kg body weight" (Lagishetty, 2008).

If you're confused, this is what that means:

"After withholding food overnight, we injected a piece of glucose (250 grams per liter) into the rat pups' abdomens at a dose of 1 gram per kilogram of their body weight to see how well their cells would use the glucose."

That is a dramatic example, but it isn't anywhere close to the worst science writing I've ever read. Fortunately some science writers are gifted and write clearly, but "some" isn't enough.

This is the age of information. Scientists need to learn how to make their information accessible, or the public will continue to disregard it. Take vaccinations as an example. People fear what they don't understand—they distrust it. The majority of the public doesn't understand the science and research behind vaccinations. They instead turn to things that they do understand, even if those things are false. Now, this isn't exactly the scientists' fault, but they aren't helping either.

Yes, people in general should be more educated in the sciences. They should trust doctors and researchers—experts—when their evidence proves something right or wrong. For the best results, however, these experts need to make their research more accessible and more understandable. They need to be better trained in writing.

They need to stop making me suffer through their papers.

To Accept Love Afforded

I love people.

I love to be with people, to talk to people, to hug people, to love people. Heck, I even love to just do homework with people. In my eyes, most anything can be better with the right people by your side.

I have amazing friends.

They are people with whom I share my the greatest and worst experiences of my life, as well as anything in between. I love to be around them, and I try to plan fun social things with them almost constantly. Except, every now and then, things slow down. I then realize that I've been pouring a lot of myself into these sorts of things, and I start to wonder if anyone's pouring back. All it takes is for my friends to invite me to something—to initiate something friendly—then I'm right back on track. But sometimes my friends can be busy, and sometimes that invitation takes a little while. That's where it gets complicated.

You see, I have a really high social tolerance—or better yet, social need—compared to most people. If I could hang out with people everyday, I definitely would. However, most of my friends probably think that it's enough to hang out a few times a month—that's their minimum for social happiness.

My minimum is every other day.

That means that I'm constantly inviting friends to do things, and they come, but I feel the need to be social again before they do. (Sure, they may like being social more often than their minimum requires, but it's not so much of an emotional need like it is for me.) So I invite them to do something else, usually before they have time to feel that same social need. Then I notice what I'm doing. Then this happens:

Brain: Whoa. [Friend person] hasn't invited you to do anything in like, forever.
Me: You're right! The last time I saw [friend person] was a whole week ago when I organized [social event]! I need to talk to him!
Brain: Wait—wouldn't he have contacted you already if he wanted to see you?
Me: Oh my gosh, maybe you're right. Maybe he doesn't want to see me! But we're friends—I'll just text him and—
Brain: No! If he really wants to talk to you then he'll text you. Don't text him.
Me: But—
Brain: LET HIM PROVE HE LOVES YOU!!!
Me: Okay, jeez! I'll sit here and be sad for a few days until he either contacts me or I give in and contact him anyway.
*Two days later*
Me: Hey brain, I felt like you were being silly earlier, so I finally just sent [friend person] a text. He's doing great and we're going to hang out soon.
Brain: He didn't even notice that he hadn't heard from you for an entire week and a half?
Me: Wow, I guess not!
Brain: Does he even value your friendship? My goodness!
Me: I dunno. I think I'll be sad about this for a while before I dismiss it as hooblah.
Brain: Sounds like a plan.

If you couldn't tell, I have a problem with false expectations and imagined intent. Because I'm very social, I expect my friends to be just as social. When they aren't, I feel like something is wrong. I imagine that they must be upset with me, or that they don't want to be as close of friends as I thought.

These are the stories I tell myself, and I know they're wrong. It just takes me a little effort to disbelieve them, and sometimes it takes me a little time to come up with that effort.

A wise friend of mine once expressed that he had this same problem, but that he knew the solution. He said that he needed to be content with the love that others were willing to give him, and not to be upset that others didn't love him as much as he wanted them to.

It makes for a hard application, but I agree. To accept love afforded means to reject love expected. I love my friends, and I know they love me. I need to accept the love that they show me in their own personal ways—without being dissatisfied whenever they don't show their love for me as I would show it.

Middle Margins: An Introduction

NOTE: This post is not to be used to coerce your gay friends/family to try dating or marrying someone of the opposite sex. This is purely my experience and my decision. Even LDS Church leaders have said that "the Church does not necessarily advise those with same-sex attraction to marry those of the opposite sex."

In November of 2014 my wife Allie and I (then only engaged) participated in the Voices of Hope Project, sponsored by North Star International. At this point I had already come out as gay to my friends and family, as well as anyone who was paying attention on Facebook. I even maximized who would see my coming out post by posting it on the day of my birthday in August. (I also announced the date and time Allie and I would be getting married, making for what one friend would describe as "the most confusing coming out post ever.") Because of all that, I didn't expect much of a reaction to come from our Voices of Hope video. At least, not a negative one.

I was pretty dang wrong.

Amid the overwhelmingly positive responses from our friends and family, strangers seemed to come out of nowhere and go out of their way to tell us our marriage was doomed. To tell us that we were "making a mistake," to tell us it was "a terrible idea for so many reasons," to tell us that "the majority of mixed orientation marriages fail"—even to tell us that "[we wouldn't] have a healthy sex life."

What the butt??

As far as "non-strangers" go, a man who said he went to the MTC with my high school seminary teacher (because that somehow boosts your credibility) said, "No amount of hope, faith, and ignorance of psychological facts will make your marriage a success if you have not completely come to terms with your sexual orientation." Then I got a message from some gay, obscurely distant family member telling me about his divorce.

All of that unsolicited information was great, but all of those people had one thing in common: they were loudly ignoring our story while trying to make us fit within the framework of their own. It didn't matter that I came out to Allie on our fourth date, because a man who came out to his wife on their 14th wedding anniversary got divorced. It didn't matter that I don't believe in reparative therapy, because a man who got married hoping to become straight left his wife for another man. It didn't matter that I love my wife dearly, because apparently gay Mormon men only marry women in response to social pressure and homophobia from the LDS Church.

Can I just say that people are dumb?

(Yes, to an extent, people are a product of their circumstances and their worldview is largely shaped by their experiences—and that's all completely valid and understandable. But when people are completely ignorant toward me I call them dumb because it makes me friggin feel better.)

Despite all of the negativity I've seen, I still try to speak out whenever I can, because this is bigger than me. There are so many people out there with stories like mine that think they're alone. They keep quiet because they feel marginalized and "othered" by both the LDS Church and the LGBT community. They feel like something is wrong with them because they're somewhere in the middle, and they wish desperately that their life could be as black and white as the extremists try to paint it.

I'm here to say that there are plenty of us here in the middle, and gray is GREAT. I love The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I follow and revere its president, Thomas S. Monson. I also think men are friggin hot (not all of them), and there's a certain part of me that can only be emotionally fulfilled by other men—and my wife and I are okay with that. Marriage and love is much more complicated than sexual orientation, and while I recognize that not everyone shares my experiences, I ask that they please at least respect my experiences. (If you want an A+, you can try to understand my experiences!)

My purpose for this blog is mostly to have an outlet when I want to talk about something I think is important. I'm not always going to be talking about LGBT or even LDS issues, but they'll probably pop up every now and again. I really just want to promote discussion, understanding, and love. I want to defend people who feel marginalized and to promote the middle ground.

By the way, our sex life is AMAZING.