Neck Doesn’t Mean You’re in Love
What is love (baby, don’t hurt me)? This question is difficult to answer, and people have been asking it from the very beginning of civilization. Perhaps the best way to define love is to find out what it is not. This obscure 1950s instructional video really does help to sharpen the line between love and passion.
The film from Coronet Instructional Films, published on YouTube channel Old TV Time , follows a pair of teenagers, Nora and Jack, who both try to find out if they love each other (warning: gratuitous old-fashioned sexism). Jack quickly replies, saying that he loves her after two months of dating, but Nora is not sure. So they both go home and ask for advice. Nora asks her wise mother how she should know if she is in love, and Jack talks to his older, more experienced brother Bob, who quickly criticizes him for being in a hurry:
“You young punks go to the movies a couple of times, twist a little and think you’re in love. Ha! “
As the banal story unfolds, you learn important lessons, such as:
- Most people fall in love more than once in their lives.
- Beauty isn’t the only thing that matters.
- Love is not like what you see in the movies.
- Your ability to love grows and develops as you grow and develop.
- There are different kinds of love: love for your parents, love for your things (for example, a child who loves a teddy bear), love for friends, and mature, romantic love.
- Everyone is in love with classmates, sports stars, movies, teachers and so on, but this is not the same as falling in love.
- Attraction, or “puppy love,” is an important stepping stone in learning how to love and be loved, but it is not the same as truly loving someone.
- The physical side of love can dominate a relationship and is often mistaken for mature love, but when infatuation fades, there is often no common ground to stand on.
- Mature love, or true love, may contain elements of all other types of love, but there is more to it. Nora’s mother says that it is “Gentle, disinterested, ready to cooperate …”
Nora’s mother explains that if you are not sure who you are meeting with, you can always ask yourself a few questions, for example:
- Are we really interested in the same things?
- Are we comfortable together?
- Are we proud of each other?
- Do we agree on basic things like religion, marriage, children, money, and so on?
Nora asks herself these questions when she and Jack have a double date with Bob and his girlfriend. During their date, Nora realizes that while Jack is fun to be with, she doesn’t quite love him the way she would like. However, this does not mean that everything has to end for Nora and Jack! They are still having a good time, so they decide to refrain from loving conversations and see what happens. And this is a great lesson for everyone to learn.