The Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Love | Katie Hood  ## Metadata - Author: [[TED Talks Daily]] - Full Title: The Difference Between Healthy and Unhealthy Love | Katie Hood - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/a59389fe-2a56-405b-a4ee-84a0842ff456 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Love Is A Learnable Skill** - Love is central to life but we are never explicitly taught how to love. - Katie Hood argues the skill of loving better can be learned and practiced over time. Transcript: Katie Hood So when you think about a child, a close friend or a romantic partner, the word love probably comes to mind, and instantly other emotions rush in. Joy and hope, excitement, trust and security, and yet sometimes sadness and disappointment. There might not be a word in the dictionary that more of us are connected to than love. Yet given its central importance in our lives, isn't it interesting that we're never explicitly taught how to love? We build friendships, navigate early romantic relationships, get married and bring babies home from the hospital with the expectation that we'll figure it out. ([Time 0:02:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cded80ed-2555-4086-a1a5-893e3f6ae610)) - **Harm Can Hide In Early Intensity** - Unhealthy relationships often begin thrilling and escalate into danger without clear recognition. - Katie Hood shows how abuse can sneak in disguised as intense affection and normalizes missing warning signs. Transcript: Katie Hood In its worst form, the harm we inflict on loved ones shows up as abuse and violence, and relationship abuse is something that one in three women and one in four men will experience in their Lifetime. Now, if you're like most people, when you hear those stats, you'll go, oh, no, no, no, that would never happen to me. It's instinctual to move away from the words abuse and violence, to think that they happened to someone else somewhere else. But the truth is, unhealthy relationships and abuse are all around us. We just call them different things and ignore the connection. Abuse sneaks up on us, disguised in unhealthy love. I work for an organization called One Love, started by a family whose daughter Yardley was killed by her ex-boyfriend. This was a tragedy no one saw coming. But when they looked back, they realized the warning signs were there, just no one understood what they were seeing. ([Time 0:03:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5cc0cadf-9e09-4b2e-9db0-5ed132822bc6)) - **Pay Attention And Use Your Voice** - Pay attention to how your relationship evolves and how you feel about the pace of intimacy. - Use your voice to state needs and notice whether your requests are respected. Transcript: Katie Hood But today I'm going to use five markers of unhealthy love. The first is intensity. Abusive relationships don't start out abusive. They start out exciting and exhilarating. There's an intensity of affection and emotion, a rush. It feels really good. You feel so lucky, like you've hit the jackpot. But in unhealthy love, these feelings shift over time, from exciting to overwhelming and maybe a little bit suffocating. You feel it in your gut. Maybe it's when your new boyfriend or girlfriend says, I love you faster than you were ready for, or starts showing up everywhere, texting and calling a lot. Maybe they're impatient when you're slow to respond, even though they know you had other things going on that day. It's important to remember that it's not how a relationship starts that matters, it's how it evolves. It's important in the early days of a new relationship to pay attention to how you're feeling. Are you comfortable with the pace of intimacy? Do you feel like you have space and room to breathe? It's also really important to start practicing using your voice to talk about your own needs. ([Time 0:05:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a6460f0d-7e82-48f0-98f3-83db0912f957)) - **Isolation Creeps In Quietly** - Isolation often starts subtly as increased time together and gradually severs outside support. - Healthy love preserves independence and connections to pre-relationship people and activities. Transcript: Katie Hood If you ask me, isolation is one of the most frequently missed and misunderstood signs of unhealthy love. Why? Well, because every new relationship starts out with this intense desire to spend time together. It's easy to miss when something shifts. Isolation creeps in when your new boyfriend or girlfriend starts pulling you away from your friends and family, your support system, and tethering you more tightly to them. They might say things like, why do you hang out with them? They're such losers about your best friends. Or they want us to break up. They're totally against us about your family. Isolation is about sowing seeds of doubt about everyone from your pre-relationship life. Healthy love includes independence, two people who love spending time together, but who stay connected to the people and activities they cared about before. While at first you might every waking minute together, over time maintaining independence is key. You do this by making plans with friends and sticking to them and encouraging your partner to do the same. ([Time 0:06:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68214d3d-bc7b-4f94-b7e9-492d3feb78ba)) - **Refuse Extreme Jealousy Demands** - Watch for extreme jealousy that demands constant location and contact updates. - Avoid tolerating possessiveness and refusal to accept your reassurances. Transcript: Katie Hood A third marker of unhealthy love is extreme jealousy. As the honeymoon period begins to fade, extreme jealousy can creep in. Your partner might become more demanding, needing to know where you are and who you're with all the time, or they might start following you everywhere, online and off. Extreme jealousy also brings with it possessiveness and mistrust, frequent accusations of flirting with other people or cheating, and refusal to listen to you when you tell them They have nothing to worry about and that you only love them. Jealousy is a part of any human relationship, but extreme jealousy is different. ([Time 0:07:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e3320c24-f38b-4954-9bf4-3b1ee21cd1a6)) - **Words Can Weaponize Love** - Words can be used as weapons and belittling silences victims. - Partners should build you up, keep secrets, and show loyalty rather than mock or shame you. Transcript: Katie Hood In unhealthy love, words are used as weapons. Conversations that used to be fun and lighthearted turn mean and embarrassing. Maybe your partner makes fun of you in a way that hurts, or maybe they tell stories and jokes for laughs at your expense. When you try to explain that your feelings have been hurt, they shut you down and accuse you of overreacting. Why are you so sensitive? What's your problem? Give me a break. You're silenced by these words. It seems pretty obvious, but your partner should have your back. Their words should build you up, not break you down. They should keep your secrets and be loyal. ([Time 0:08:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6dc86754-6da6-421e-ab09-bb079d857e95)) - **The Conditioning Power Of Volatility** - Volatility features repeated breakups and makeups that condition people to accept abuse. - High emotional swings with hateful comments followed by apologies are warning signs. Transcript: Katie Hood Frequent breakups and makeups, high highs and low lows. As tension rises, so does volatility. Tearful, frustrated fights followed by emotional makeups. Hateful and hurtful comments like, you're worthless, I'm not even sure why I'm with you. Followed quickly by apologies and promises it will never happen again. By this point, you've been so conditioned to this relationship roller coaster that you may not realize how unhealthy and maybe even dangerous your relationship has become. ([Time 0:09:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3680476c-10e8-42c3-9d18-d90a653742da)) - **Plan Exits With Expert Help** - Leaving an unhealthy relationship isn't always the safest immediate option due to risk of violence. - If you fear escalation, consult experts to plan a safe exit. Transcript: Katie Hood And if your instinct is to break up and leave, which is advice so many of us give our friends when they're on unhealthy relationships, that's not always the best advice. Time of breakup can be a real trigger for violence. If you fear you might be headed towards abuse or in abuse, you need to consult with experts to get the advice on how to leave safely. ([Time 0:10:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/88c52bac-585d-4051-b63a-cf4468f598ed)) - **Practice Daily Relationship Skills** - Practice open communication, mutual respect, kindness, and patience daily. - Small, consistent efforts will improve relationship skills even if you won't be perfect. Transcript: Katie Hood And here's the exciting news. It's actually not rocket science. Open communication, mutual respect, kindness, patience. We can practice these things every day. ([Time 0:11:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/19ac5a8c-ca06-442e-8ad0-25697b9925b8)) - **Son Calls Out A Parental Outburst** - Katie Hood recounts losing her temper with her children and using belittling words in frustration. - Her son's response, "Mom, that's not love," gave him language to call out unhealthy behavior. Transcript: Katie Hood I do this for a living. Every day I think and talk about healthy relationships, and still I do unhealthy things. Just the other day as I was trying to shuttle my four kids out the door amidst quarreling, squabbling, and complaints about breakfast, I completely lost it. With an intentionally angry edge, I screamed, everybody just shut up and do what I say. You are the worst. I'm going to take away screen time and dessert and anything else you could possibly ever enjoy in life. Anybody been there? Volatility. Belittling. My oldest son turned around and looked at me and said, Mom, that's not love. For a minute, I really wanted to kill him for calling me out, trust me. But then I gathered myself, and I thought, you know what, I'm actually proud. I'm proud that he has a language to make me pause. ([Time 0:11:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/63fd82c0-bb0c-4ed2-913b-28f10365ed99))