The Many Sides of Love
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In a recent article, the writer Haley Mlotek asks: 'How can we define [love] well enough to demarcate its beginnings and endings?' Or, in the words of a classic '90s song that I imagine will now be stuck in your head, 'What is love?'
This post–Valentine's Day morning, we're sharing a collection of stories that explore the many facets of love. The following articles interrogate love as a feeling, a source of happiness, and the foundation of friendship and romance alike.
Seven Books That Capture How Love Really Feels
By Haley Mlotek
These books are all exquisite arguments for the necessity of stories about romance.
Read the article.
The Type of Love That Makes People Happiest
By Arthur C. Brooks
When it comes to lasting romance, passion has nothing on friendship.
Read the article.
What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?
By Rhaina Cohen
'Our boyfriends, our significant others, and our husbands are supposed to be No. 1. Our worlds are backward.'
Read the article.
Still Curious?
Don't let love take over your life: In 2023, Faith Hill argued for the importance of love-life balance.
The case for dating a friend: The warmth and care of an existing friendship is a great foundation for a romantic relationship—even if it feels scary to take the leap, Joe Pinsker wrote in 2022.
Other Diversions
The rich tourists who want more, and more, and more
What the biggest Saturday Night Live fans know
The brilliant stupidity of internet speak
P.S.
Each week, I ask readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. 'On my daily drive to town in Schoharie County, New York, I've stopped many times to take this same panoramic shot of the upper Catskills. I never tire of it as it changes each season,' writes Scott Oglesby, 78, from Middleburgh, New York.
I'll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. If you'd like to share, reply to this email with a photo and a short description so we can share your wonder with fellow readers in a future edition of this newsletter or on our website. Please include your name (initials are okay), age, and location. By doing so, you agree that The Atlantic has permission to publish your photo and publicly attribute the response to you, including your first name and last initial, age, and/or location that you share with your submission.
— Isabel
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But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral. Related The surprising truth about loneliness in America Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 study that examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., 'John bought a pair of nice shoes!'), negative ('John bought a pair of ugly shoes!') and neutral ('John bought a pair of shoes.'). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men. 'It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,' Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at the University of California Riverside, says. 'So there's this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.' Robbins's study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they're gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively. Getty Images/iStockphoto More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they're at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, 'were consistently more open' to being talked about. 'I mean it, maybe it's as simple as men just like attention,' Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales's study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative. 'If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it's not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,' Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don't enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it. The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that's the case, why are they notoriously awful at it? Why are men bad at gossiping Comedian and podcaster Jared Freid intuitively believes what Robbins's study proves: that uninspired male gossips just haven't put in the work, like weight lifters who regularly skip leg day. 'I just don't think there's as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there's a lot more reps for women,' Freid, a man, tells me. 'We're just not trained, you know?' Freid primarily attributes men's unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo's various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale. Straight men, he says, don't have an equivalent. While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels 'messy' and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It's not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it's that they won't allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it. 'I don't think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,' Freid says. Kelsey McKinney, the author of You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip and the founding host of the Normal Gossip podcast, sees this fear from men, too. 'Straight men seem to have the perception that gossip isn't talking about other people,' McKinney says. 'Gossip, to them, is a tone of voice that they avoid at all costs.' Gossip Girl (starring Blake Lively and Leighton Meester) was a TV show about popular teens terrorized by a secret, anonymous online gossip (who turned out to be a guy named Dan Humphries). The CW This attitude grows out from a misogynistic idea that gossip is a negative thing that women do, something Robbins, the social scientist, considered during her research. 'There's a stereotype that women [negatively] gossip more than men, but there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence for that,' Robbins tells Vox. 'And I feel like having the stereotype that women gossip more than men, you know, serves to keep them in their place, right?' Robbins believes that social skills are valuable, and being able to discuss social topics is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Yet historically, those abilities haven't always been prized. Dismissing all social talk as gossip was a way to dismiss the women who possess those talents. Now, so many men see gossip as unbecoming as well as unmanly, they don't allow themselves to really relish the juicy morsels, nor do they tease out the savory bits. Curiously, Freid is the co-host of the Betches media-produced podcast U Up? It's a show devoted to decoding dating and relationships. His professional life revolves around piquing people's interests and recounting people's stories in hilarious ways. Does that mean the careers Freid's chosen are at odds with his manhood? 'I had to learn to be a better storyteller,' Freid tells me. To do that? He talked to women; friends, his co-host, his coworkers at Betches. A lot of women. Could gossip cure the male loneliness epidemic? Okay, so men might be less adept at gossip. Do they really need to be good at it? As Robbins indicated, continuing research shows that gossip can be a helpful social tool. Talking about other people isn't just 'not all bad,' it can be actively good. McKinney says that social scientists and psychologists have been reassessing the tropes, narratives, and stigma surrounding gossip and gossipers, and they've found that gossip brings people closer together. The idea is that the individual piece of gossip is less important than the bond that's forged when someone shares information with another person. Maybe the true measure of a friendship is the 'Can I be a bitch for a second?' texts we sent along the way. We share stories with people we think we are close to, and sharing things with other people creates intimacy. The gossip we share, arguably, is as much about our own values and beliefs and dislikes as it is about other people. At the same time, over the past half-decade or so, much has been made of what's known as the male loneliness epidemic — the idea that men are lonelier than ever and that their friendships are dwindling. If intimacy is defined, in part, by the idea of sharing stories with one another, it's not that difficult to see men who are bad at gossip hit with a lose-lose situation. They don't have the close friendships that facilitate gossip and the bond-building that comes with it, and they don't get good enough at gossip to initiate the bond-building. That's a problem, because men are disadvantaged when it comes to intimacy and communication from an early age. 'Research shows that by the time little boys are 3, we talk to them less and touch them less,' Alexandra Solomon, a relationship psychologist at Northwestern University, tells me. Solomon says that fewer conversations and less physical affection in childhood have long-lasting social effects. As boys grow up, many will tend to see communication as transactional, or directive, or a means to solving problems instead of an avenue that builds relationships. Those men see the sharing of gossip and storytelling in general as uncomfortable or a taboo, instead of intimately sharing and engaging with a story. 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself.' 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself,' Freid, the comedian and man, tells me. 'I don't hear someone telling me their story and go, Oh, good. I can tell them all my stories.' Freid says he sees male friendships and female friendships as fundamentally different, echoing Solomon's explanation of the divergent ideas about communication. Female friendships, he says, involves a give-and-go, a trading of shoulders to cry on. That 'trading' allows for deeper friendships among women — but, he suspects, also opens the door for potential rifts when someone doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. Fried takes some comfort in the idea that he never has to worry about hypothetically disappointing his buddies. 'I just have no friends where I'd be like, I can't believe they haven't called recently,' he says. It's not too hard, though, to link not expecting anyone to check in with a larger, existential problem with loneliness. Is that lack of expectation worth the lack of support? If Saturdays are proverbially for the boys, why not mix in some yapping? If straight men (statistically) gossip anyway, is there real harm in openly enjoying it, seeking it out, using it to build connections? As easy as that seems, it's asking men to share things about themselves in ways that go against how they've been conditioned. 'I would actually be out of a job if men could do that,' Solomon, the psychologist at Northwestern, tells me. 'If the trade-off is not having a career, but men talked and shared more? I would do it.'
