How to flip the script on love
What you’ll learn
Week 1
- The stories that have shaped your views of love
- Debunking love as an unknowable force: the “romantic mystique”
- Definitions of romantic love
- Comparing received stories to your own expectations for love
Week 2
- The pitfalls of “falling” or being “overcome” by love
- Claiming more agency in love
- Immediate, simple ways to receive and give love
- Making and responding to bids for attention
Week 3
- Amatonormativity and its influence on your relationships
- The evolution of marriage ideals and norms
- Getting your needs met: intimacy and emotional support from multiple sources
Week 4
- Debunking the myth of the soulmate
- Comparing and combining destiny beliefs and growth beliefs
- Creating intentional expectations for your relationships
- Choosing who to love and how to practice loving well
What you’ll get
- 1 welcome video
- 3-4 video teaching segments/week (~60 minutes total)
- 3-4 individual activities/week (14 total)
- 1 virtual live event/week (attendance is optional)
- Community discussions, polls and chat
- Support from a TED Courses facilitator
- Carefully curated related resources from TED
- PDF course workbook
- After the course, access to an archive of course videos, activities and curated resources
To get the most out of the course,
plan to spend at least one hour each week–longer, if you plan to explore the optional curated resources or join the virtual live event.
Here’s what learners are saying about this course:
Mandy Len Catron is the author of the critically-acclaimed essay collection How to Fall in Love with Anyone. The book was listed for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize and the Kobo Emerging Writer Award. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Rumpus, Catapult, and The Walrus as well as other newspapers, literary journals, and anthologies. Her essays and talks have been translated into more than thirty languages.
Mandy’s article “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This” was one of the most popular articles published by The New York Times in 2015. Her two TEDx talks on romantic love have been viewed more than seven million times.
She is a faculty member in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
To learn more about Mandy, visit mandylencatron.com.
