Love in the Digital Age

Matt Darroch: There's something so life-affirming about when the two love interests in a rom-com meet for the first time.

About Time Clip

Matt Darroch: And nothing hits like a good old-fashioned love confession.

Jerry Maguire Clip

Matt Darroch: Ah, yes. These movies have nourished our inner romantic for generations. But what do young people think of rom-coms these days?

Jennie Rosier: They audibly vomit. They in the classroom go, "Ew, that's disgusting. I would be so freaked out if a man spoke to me in public like that." They do not like that at all anymore.

Matt Darroch: From Virginia Humanities, this is With Good Reason. I'm Matt Darroch. Today on the show: Love, according to Gen Z. And later, using AI to help land a date. 

Jennie Rosier has taught a class on communications and romantic relationships for close to 15 years. It's a class that involves some pretty open discussions about her students' personal lives. And she's noticed big changes in how Gen Z views the dating scene. Jennie's a Communication Studies Professor at James Madison University.

Jennie, Gen Z has kind of, you know, built its own language around dating. Let's start with a little rapid fire round of you listing some of these new dating terms and their definitions.

Jennie Rosier: So, breadcrumbing: this is when you give just enough small hints or text messages to keep the other person interested, but you never plan to commit to anything. Cuffing season: this is when you want to find a partner during the cold autumn and winter months, so we're coming up on cuffing season, and sometimes this makes Gen Zers get in relationships just because—just because it's the time of year. Another fun one is the "talking phase." This is the stage that begins when you first start interacting with someone, which for Gen Z is usually online. Some other interesting ones are "Shrekking." This is where you date someone that's less attractive than you, so that you can somehow maintain like control in the relationship or the upper hand. I've heard students say things like, "Oh well, if I Shrek someone, then they'll be grateful to be with me, and then they'll stay with me longer." And then, one of my favorites is "getting the ick," which I was so fascinated by that I did an entire study looking at the origin of it and how it's been socially constructed. But getting the ick is when the other person does something that turns you off or you're very embarrassed by.

Matt Darroch: Well, that—I feel like the ick is the only one that I immediately recognize. Where did that even come from? I feel like it appeared a few years ago and has, you know, really transcended generational lines.

Jennie Rosier: It has. And so, the ick started off on the show Love Island UK in 2017. A contestant named Olivia Attwood said it during one of the one-on-one interviews.

Olivia Attwood: Then I'm derailed. When you when you've seen a boy and you get the ick, like, it doesn't go. And it's one of those things once you've got You've caught it, it's like, you know, it like takes over your body, and it's like, it's just ick.

Jennie Rosier: And then other women on the show thought it was funny and a great way to describe their feelings, and so they all started saying it. And that show was watched by millions of people, and social media took the phrase by storm, and then TikTok was used to send that phrase "getting the ick" out to the masses, and it became a really, really common thing that lots of Gen Zers not only know what it is and they can define it, but many of them would argue that, "Oh yeah, I've experienced it, not just once, not just twice, but many times."

Matt Darroch: And so is it used mostly in a funny way, or are these silly things actually considered, you know, serious red flags?

Jennie Rosier: Yeah, so I found there are two main camps to how Gen Z views getting the ick. So, I analyzed a ton of TikTok videos—like what a fun project—and many of the videos and comments, they either thought the ick was real and legitimate, and then the other camp is "this is ridiculous and invalid." And many of those videos would make fun of people who said they had the ick. So, you know, it would be like on TikTok, you can stitch a video. So someone posts—Person 1 posts a video, and then you decide that you're going to make a response to that video. So you stitch their video to a new video, and it's like, you play the old video, and then you comment on it. And many videos were showing women making relatively dumb ick videos, you know, they would say that, "Oh, he was breathing too heavy when we were in a quiet place, and I got the ick." And then a man would stitch that video and scroll to his Notes app where he would open up—it would be like a note that said "What not to do," and he would scroll down, you know, hundreds of things, and then it would get to the bottom, and it would say "breathe." You know, like, "Do not breathe." And so they're clearly making fun of these women who are like, "Really? You got the ick from your man breathing too heavy? Like, what is wrong with you?" But then I think there's other ones that are more legitimate like, you know, maybe there was a more serious red flag that was being described in the ick. And for those women, I think that they look at this as a label for their intuition or their gut feelings.

Matt Darroch: You've taught classes on communications and romantic relationships for close to 15 years now. How have your students' views on dating changed over that time?

Jennie Rosier: Dramatically. So, in the beginning of my time at JMU, a lot of the questions focused on: is hookup culture okay?

Matt Darroch: Mm, like morally?

Jennie Rosier: Yeah, like is it morally okay to engage in hookup culture when I'm this young, you know? And then things turned to, you know, "How do I deal with jealousy?" because I'm in college, and if I date anybody, there's lots of other attractive people our exact same age, and jealousy is rampant, and how do I deal with jealousy? And this got especially important to them during the, you know, evolving social media climate, where people were really on social media more and more and more. And then once we started coming back from the pandemic, the conversations started to change into like—they started using all this language that I didn't understand, many of the words that I described earlier. And it was less of them asking me questions and more of me saying, "What are you talking about? What? What did you just say? What is the talking phase? What do you mean you're in a situation-ship? What is that?" And so I started realizing that maybe I was aging out, and I needed to understand what they were even talking about. And so we would have these discussions where I would ask them lots of questions about their dating lives, and I realized there was research there to be done. And so that's when I conducted a study in 2024 about what it's like to be a Gen Zer and what early dating looks like for them.

Matt Darroch: Could you see yourself in them when they were talking about dating, like did it remind you at all about when you were dating?

Jennie Rosier: I mean, sometimes, but a lot of it is really different. Like things that they find to be romantic are not things that I would have found, or my friends would have found, to be romantic when we were—when we were in our early 20s.

Matt Darroch: What do you mean?

Jennie Rosier: So, a great example: they all talk about—and this is been the same since the beginning—everybody always talks about wanting to be in a relationship, right? So every—they all want it still. It's not that they don't want a romantic relationship, they do want it. They are just having trouble getting it, and I like to ask them: imagine you go to a grocery store this afternoon and you reach for an apple, and a man reaches for the same apple, and you have this funny interaction where you, you know, lock eyes and have a conversation, and, "Oh my gosh, the same apple!" And in the past—and I would argue in the early 2000s when I was their age—I think that many women especially would say, "Oh yeah, that would be so awesome. Like we—I could have met my husband in the grocery store touching the same apple, right?" And I think many men would be like, "Oh yeah, that would be a great way to pick up a girl, right?" But now, when I say that example, they all audibly vomit. They audibly vomit. They in the classroom go, "Ew, that's disgusting. I would be so freaked out if a man spoke to me in public like that in a grocery store, and if he touched the same apple as me, that is so gross." And so that was very much a rom-com scenario from the '90s, and they do not like that at all anymore. And so I think this is doing something where it's hindering how they meet people, and they don't like the dating apps, but they're kind of dooming themselves to the dating apps, because they don't want to be approached in public. So how are they supposed to have an interaction besides using the dating apps that they all hate?

Matt Darroch: Yeah, what role does social media have to play in all of this? You know, Gen Zers are basically the first generation to have social media available their whole lives.

Jennie Rosier: Yes, it plays a massive role—a massive role. If a generation wanted to promote something in the past, we all had to have conversations with each other and agree and communicate with enough people that it became part of our generation's reality. And so, sometimes that meant that things that started in California, you know, a lot of times California would start something, and then it would take weeks or months to get all the way across the country, and if New York started something, it would take weeks or months to get all the way across the country for all the teenagers and young people to be doing the same thing. Where now, Olivia Attwood says "getting the ick" on a television show maybe 10 times, and then a few million-view videos were created that week, and within minutes, everybody knew what getting the ick was. Everybody did. There's songs written about it.

Song Waterfall Clip

Jennie Rosier: And that happened quickly, like within days. And so social media helps Gen Z socially construct their reality so much faster than previous generations were able to.

Matt Darroch: I was at my family reunion a month or so ago, and just out of curiosity, I asked everyone to share their average screen time use. Mine was around four hours per day, which I'm totally ashamed of, and everyone else's was about the same, except for the lone Gen Zer in the room, my niece. She said hers was around 13 hours! That's literally almost every waking moment of the day. How did the Gen Zers feel about phones in the context of dating?

Jennie Rosier: Well, it's this reluctant love-hate relationship. So, they don't want to use dating apps anymore, for the most part. They do not like it. My students will frequently talk about, "I want to organically meet someone," and I'm like, "By not speaking to people in public? What are you talking about?" Like, they talk about this idealized world where they organically meet their romantic partners, but then they're not willing to do anything to change the way that they meet romantic partners so that they can achieve that goal. So they talk a big talk, but then they still use the dating apps because it's the only thing that they think is available and it is the way that people meet each other. And they don't like how, you know, just superficial it is and that it's all based on what someone looks like. And I like to tell them, you know, it's always been about what someone looks like whether you're in person or not. That's not changing. Yeah, so they don't like it, but they don't have a solution. And I would say to them, every single person I've interviewed for this study doesn't like it, so you guys need to talk to each other about how you don't like it, and you guys need to do something, like make a couple TikToks, maybe that would work.

Matt Darroch: Yeah, or maybe they need to watch more rom-coms from the '90s and early 2000s.

Jennie Rosier: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Matt Darroch: All right, let's end with this: what do you think Gen Z gets right when it comes to dating and love?

Jennie Rosier: They are waiting longer to get married, and I think that that is a really great outcome. Gone are the days where half of my class is engaged by the end of their senior year, and so I think that that is positive. They're waiting a little longer, for the most part. 

I mean, I really like it when I come into class and I'm like, today we're going to talk about boundaries, and half of my class knows what boundaries are, and they know what their boundaries are, and they know how to communicate them. And that was not the case 15 years ago. They just thought, wait, I'm supposed to know what I like and what I dislike, and then I'm supposed to say it to someone. What do you mean? And so,I think that that is beneficial. 

I also think when they're in a relationship that doesn't feel right, they're ending it. They're not staying longer than they should. But I think overall, things are going good with Gen Z, I just kind of wish that they would not reluctantly do things they don't want to do, which is the number one complaint they have. 

Matt Darroch: Well, Jenny, this has been fun. Thanks for sharing your insight on what's good reason. Thank you.

Jenny Rosier is a communication studies professor at James Madison University,

Matt Darroch: Asking your crush out is the ultimate leap of faith. You gotta muster up the courage and find the right words, and then there's always the chance they're just not that into you. But what if something existed, free and easily accessible, that could boost your odds of landing the date? David Rochet is a communication studies professor at Christopher Newport University. He studies the power of AI to make love connections.

David, you say a South Park episode got you interested in studying AI in the field of dating. I gotta know more. What's the episode about

David Roaché: he boys were having trouble with their girlfriends, and one of the boys, I forget if it was Stan or if it was Clyde, said, "Well, I'm just using ChatGPT. So when when my girlfriend texts me, I am immediately just asking ChatGPT to respond, and then I'm copying and pasting the response back to my girlfriend. 

Southpark Clip

And suddenly, all the girlfriends are like, "Wow, you know, man, my boyfriend's so great. He's so attentive. He's so supportive, and it was making the boys who weren't doing that look bad in comparison.

Matt Darroch: So your big question, kind of prompted by this episode, was whether AI could help people land a date. How did you test that? Yeah,

David Roaché: Yeah, so came into this thinking like, well, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Let's try to extend and replicate a study that already existed. And in the early 2000s, there was a study that looked at date request message effectiveness, but it was voicemails because early 2000s texting,you know, it was there but not quite as big. And so we took some of the procedures and approach from that particular study, and modified it to to a texting scenario, and recruited participants who were single to ask somebody out, and they were randomly placed into you know one of three conditions: one, where they were told just to ask somebody out on a date that you have romantic interest in, and do that on your own. 

The other participants were put into a condition where they were told to have ChatGPT write this message for them and copy and paste what ChatGPT said for asking them out. 

And the third condition was, we'll ask ChatGPT to write this message, get the output, and then we want you to modify and edit it to whatever you'd like it to sound like. So take that ChatGPT date request message and make it sound like you. So we had these messages, and they rated the message on their own.

Matt Darroch: All right, let's play a little game. Share some examples of the AI messages in human messages, but don't tell me which is which. I want to see if I can identify the ones that are AI or I guess AI enhanced.

David Roaché: Yeah, so let's try this one on for size:

Hi, how are you?

I was wondering if you'd be interested in going out to dinner this weekend, my treat exclamation mark at the end. Straight into the point. Okay, all right.

Second one is: Hey there exclamation point. I've been thinking about getting to know you better and was wondering if you'd like to grab coffee or dinner sometime this week. 

And third one is: would you be interested in grabbing coffee or dinner with me sometime. I'd love the chance to get to know you better and share some great conversation. 

Matt Darroch: I want to say the last one was AI. 

David Roaché: The last one was there was AI involved, but that was an AI output modified by human. So there was AI like the the human had the final say over that message. Okay,

Matt Darroch: Then the second one had to be AI, right? 

David Roaché: It it was, yeah, that was AI. 

Matt Darroch: That was a lot harder than I thought.

David Roaché: Yeah, and I think that speaks to how good some of these large language models are at making predictions, because that's all they're doing is trying to figure out what's the best combination and ordering of words to arrive at the output based on your instructions.

Matt Darroch: So, what ended up being your main findings from the study? Were AI messages better at landing a date?

David Roaché: They were for people who were not aware of the source of the message. What we found is that when participants rated their own message, the AI and human messages weren't any different on effectiveness. But when you had the third-party coders and raters complete the ratings, those objective ratings, AI messages were rated as more effective than human messages.

Yeah, so it speaks to some of those broader concerns, right, about AI that people have certain perceptions about new technology, including AI, and for like these more subjective tasks, there may be certain biases against the use of AI. But if you don't know, those AI messages were actually more effective than human-written ones. 

Matt Darroch: You know, lots of us use AI to edit our emails, but should we be using it to edit our private love messages as well? 

David Roaché: I think if you're using it well and responsibly and with genuine intent, that should mitigate some of the concerns with like lack of authenticity. So I think there needs to also be some transparency at some point, like, or how are you using it? How do you communicate to a potential or current romantic partner that, hey, you know, I'm I'm trying to say the right thing here. Like, I want to let you know that I have bounced this idea off of this large language model in the same way that you could bounce an idea off a friend. 

Matt Darroch: Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't seem like there's that same requirement. You know, if you bounce it off a friend, it seems more organic that way than using ChatGPT, right? 

David Roaché: And part of the issue there is that you're bouncing it off something that's not organic, that something that's synthetic, right? So I think that's kind of one of the larger takeaways from these findings: is you have to determine, and I think we're still so early on in the use of AI for, you know, personal reasons like in relational communication in the context of the study we published about asking somebody out on a date. 

Those norms and positions and expectations and perceptions of AI-they're still evolving. We haven't quite arrived yet. You know, when technologies are new, you have to figure out culturally, societally, but also relationally, what is and what is not appropriate in terms of usage. 

Matt Darroch: I met my wife on one of the dating apps years ago. AI really wasn't a thing back then, but do AI features exist on dating apps now, or or are they currently in the works?

David Roaché: Some platforms do, like we'll offer you suggestions for prompts and responses to those prompts. Some will even offer suggestions when you're readying to send a message. Right? Are you sure you want to kind of send that message, which is very, very kind of simple stuff, right? 

I've given a few talks about some of this research at conferences, and we actually had a representative from Tinder on the research team in the audience, and they had some thoughts as well because they're testing this. They're testing whether users are going to enjoy knowing that their prospective partner was using AI to like ask them out or to put their profile together? 

Matt Darroch: How would they know? Would there be like a watermark at the bottom of the message that says like "Brought to you by AI" or something?

David Roaché: You know, I I wonder if that might be the route if they want to be transparent because, you know, on social media you see that AI-generated content tag a lot on posts nowadays, and so will that show up on on your profile? And you also see users using AI to generate profile photos on the platform as well, which I find to be humorous because that's not you, and there's always those concerns about deception with online dating. 

Matt Darroch: Yeah, but doesn't it feel like using AI in messages is also kind of a form of deception as well? 

David Roaché: It's a good question. I think if you're withholding the fact that you're using AI, yes, that's certainly a form of deception. That's a type of deception when you withhold information, right? But I also think that you're using a tool to help you communicate better. Potentially, ideally, the suggestions you get are things you learn to do on your own, just like when you ask a friend or you take a class as an undergraduate or graduate student about how to communicate effectively. That maybe the suggestions you you use, then you don't need to use it next time. 

Like there's research that's coming out now that I'm currently working on too. That's looking at the back end of relationships too, where you're not just using it to secure a date. How are people using it to end relationships, as well as how are people using it to keep a relationship going,like all those boys on South Park messaging. Like there's research that points to the use of it for the ongoing effort in a relationship.

Matt Darroch: I don't know why, but it feels like I'm more open to using AI to end a relationship than I am to start to start a relationship.

David Roaché: Yeah, I think when you're using it to end a relationship, you don't have those same concerns about maintaining authenticity. Really, what you're trying to do with a breakup message is communicate that your desire to end a relationship, but you're also communicating a way to maintain face. And what I mean by that is like say something that makes you seem like a decent person, and also say things that do not hurt you know the image or the well-being of the other person. And so, for the more difficult conversations, like a breakup message, these large language models could give you some useful suggestions to help you with those conversations. 

Matt Darroch: Yeah, it would also be pretty hilarious to get a breakup message with a "roughed to you by AI" watermark on the bottom.

David Roaché: Yeah, you might have a particular reaction. You could either be very angry at that and angry, or you could you could laugh it off and say, "I maybe I dodged something there.

Matt Darroch: David Roaché is a communication studies professor at Christopher Newport University.

This is With Good Reason. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to With Good Reason, from Virginia Humanities.

When you think of love, romantic love probably first comes to mind. But there are so many other types of love. And even though there's something universally human about love, it's deeply shaped by the values and traditions of cultures around the world. Nicole Willock is a professor of Asian religions and chair of the Department of Religious Studies and director of Asian Studies at Old Dominion University. She teaches a popular Love, Sex, and Desire class through the lens of Eastern traditions.

Nicole, how does a philosophy professor of Eastern traditions, a.k.a. you, end up teaching a Love, Sex, and Desire class?

Nicole Willock: Well, at ODU, the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department teaches a lot of general education classes. And we were trying to come up with names of titles of classes that multiple teachers could teach and would, you know, be of interest to our students. And for some reason, Buddhist studies is not as hip with younger students anymore. I'm not exactly sure why, but it's just not as popular as it used to be.

Matt Darroch: What got you interested in Buddhist traditions when you were younger?

Nicole Willock: For me personally, I think I did grow up in New York State, and my aunt Leslie—shout-out to Leslie—she's an artist and amazing woman. She was in Nepal, actually, back in the early '80s, late '70s, leading treks. And so she actually brought me back from Nepal my first pair of Tibetan-style boots [chuckle] and introduced me to Buddhism at the time. I didn't really understand it. I understood that Buddhism and culture were kind of intertwined with each other. And as an Asian studies student at the time, I was really lucky to go to China when I was only 20 years old. I was learning Chinese, and I had the opportunity to study there. And I visited a lot of Buddhist monasteries, and I had a lot of time to read. And I think that was really my entry point into Buddhism. And Buddhism made so much sense to me as kind of a philosophy, and as I was seeing unfold, as a way of life as well.

Matt Darroch: Well, you teach this Love, Sex, and Desire class through a lens of Eastern traditions. You know, what—what is love? Love is one of those essential things that make us human. There's been an infinite amount of art created about it. I've personally experienced it, and I'm sure you have, too. But what exactly is it?

Nicole Willock: Yeah, I think that's a [chuckle] a wonderful question, and don't we all want to just be able to answer it? And don't we already know what it is, right? I think, you know, especially when students come to the class, everyone's like, "Oh, I—I know." You know, we take for granted that we understand what love is. But, you know, just as communication is so problematic, just even between couples or friends or whatever, I really think that as a culture, we assume we understand what love is and that it's a universal thing, right? But when it comes to investigating it, when we look at love in different contexts, you know, whether that's historical context, or social context, or cultural context, we see that love manifests in different ways. And yeah, we can kind of see an overarching theme for different types of love, but I don't think we have an essential definition of love [laughter], although we all think we do.

Matt Darroch: Do you have a personal definition of what love means to you?

Nicole Willock: Um, I think I'm influenced by so many different cultures at this point. I mean, I'm 56 years old, and I've lived in a lot of different countries. And I think my understanding of love is kind of complex, like a bit of like a mosaic or tapestry, and it manifests in different ways. Yeah.

Matt Darroch: How dependent on culture is love, or is it not dependent at all, and it's just this universal force found in all of us humans?

Nicole Willock: You know, I think love as a category really intersects with both what is deeply personal and individual, and then also to community and the public, if you want to say, like so the larger kind of social, political, historical context as well. So it's one of those really interesting categories that really touches meaningfully on both those aspects of ourselves, you know, the person as an individual and the person as a social being. So, yeah. You know, there is some sort of, undoubtedly, universal connection. I—I truly do believe in that. Especially when it comes to what's often referred to, the highest form of love, whether we want to call that divine love, or in Greek it was called agape, in Tibetan Buddhism you could say it's snying rje, which means noble heart. But this sort of idea of true compassion where there's no divisions between anybody and you or anything, and you can see everything equally, like true equanimity in that sense. You see that, you know, just across human cultures, this kind of form of universal love that is truly—I don't know, I feel like a human, but not—not just human. You kind of see it in—in animals, too, don't you? 'Cause like there's, you know, there is something about that devotion, that equanimity, that kindness, that big-heartedness, that is undoubtedly human.

Matt Darroch: And you mentioned earlier that love can be broken down into different types. What are they? [Chuckle] What are the different types of love?

Nicole Willock: Yeah, well, you know, we—we need what are called heuristics, right? Like these kind of interpretive lenses. And—and one way to make sense of love is to break them down into different types of categories. And there's a kind of classic way that I do it. And so you can say there's eros, right? The erotic love or the—the romantic love, that sexual desire, that romantic type of love. There's storge, which is this kind of marriage or familial love, that love that we get in a family unit. And then there's philia, which is often translated as brotherly love, but it's—it's friendship and often in the Greek sense, it's this kind of notion of hospitality, right? What do you do for those who are in close quarters with you, your—your friends, right? And then the third category I mentioned is agape, which is that kind of universal love, that divine love, that kind of larger-than-life in some ways. Yeah.

Matt Darroch: Well, let's start with brotherly love. Tell me about the Brother Orange story from China.

Nicole Willock: Oh, I love this story. So the last time I taught this class, I did this as a COIL class. So COIL is Collaborative Online International Learning. So I worked with another professor from Hong Kong, and so it was a really international class. [Laughter] And she proposed this idea of this story that I actually hadn't heard of before, but I loved it. And it's um—it's a BuzzFeed story, basically, by a guy called Matt Stopera. And it happened back in 2014, but, you know, you can still Google it. It still comes up on BuzzFeed. He basically lost his phone in, I think it was in Brooklyn or Manhattan, in New York City somewhere. And then a few months later, he starts to see his photos like on his iPhone with this guy from China [chuckle] who—who who becomes his friend, and his nickname is Brother Orange.

Brother Orange Clip

Nicole Willock: And then Matt ends up becoming this kind of internet sensation in China. And then it takes it to the next level, and Brother Orange invites Matt over to China.

Brother Orange Clip

Nicole Willock: They're followed around and, you know, courted by, you know, all sorts of social media buzz and—and everything. But really, the essence of the story, it hits on not just their personal, you know, friendship, that they clearly admire each other and clearly have, you know, this kind of connection where they just enjoy each other's company, right? That kind of understanding of friendship that we typically understand as friendship. But they also, through this story, also shows this different types of hospitality or this different types of way of treating a guest, right? And in China, like I've had the, you know, wonderful opportunity to study in China, and for me, this was really an opportunity for students to tap into this kind of incredible hospitality that you are given when you're a guest in China. You're treated to all these incredible meals, you're shown around, you always have an escort, you're never by yourself. You know, there's this kind of sense that there's this feeling that you really owe this person, not in a obligatory way, but—but you want to show this person your own culture. And it's just a beautiful story because you can see both that personal friendship-type thing, but you also understand that there's more to it, that there's, you know, this kind of cultural friendship that happens through this exchange. And it's really quite a fun story. I recommend reading it.

Matt Darroch: You also teach about expressions of love in Japan. You know, I—I've heard the phrase "I love you" is a pretty—is pretty rare in Japanese culture. Is that true?

Nicole Willock: From what I understand, I haven't actually spent a lot of time in Japan. I've only been to the Tokyo Airport, so I—I'm not a Japanese a scholar of Japanese religions or anything. I have read a lot, and I've spent a lot of time in China. And it's interesting because the character in Japanese is the same in Chinese, ai, right? That's the same Chinese character that is used. And in Japanese, it's pronounced ai jo is how I understand it's pronounced. And this is quite common in China as well, that it's—it's just not common to say "I love you," right? That is a very uncommon thing to say. And love, romantic love is expressed in a different way through actions, right? It's important to show one's deep, meaningful connections through what one does. And also it—it sounds like the—the I think the term is aishiteiru. And that is also like a kind of written form, and it—it can be quite awkward [laughter] from what I understand. Yeah, so all of these contexts and the way that we use language really matters. And, you know, when one is in relationship, it's really important to have that iterative process. Well, how do you understand love? What does love mean to you? And it's a conversation. It's not something that is—is one-sided, right? It's a—it's truly a—a kind of give and take, and—and a a back and forth, and a dialogue that—that happens. And so I think that's what makes it really special, right?

Matt Darroch: I'm really interested in the section you teach about non-binary identities in Indian traditions. I believe they're called the—the hijra?

Nicole Willock: Yeah, Waheeda Rehman's book is really wonderful. Um, one of the things that Rehman really brings up is how hijra, they're this kind of diverse category for the—a third sex, right? So, some in American culture will call that trans, but basically, it is a living community in India. They are very marginalized now, but they used to perform at the courts and—and be singers and—and performers, and that kind of—um, they had a very esteemed role in Indian history. And so we look at those various dynamics about the historical context and the political context also really matters in how we understand even the most basic things. So, you know, science right now defines, and the predominant norms right now, have a certain kind of fixed idea of what sex is, and especially biological sex. But really, even as soon as you start talking to a biologist, you know, this idea of what biological sex is is much more complex than we really understand commonly.

Matt Darroch: You know, obviously, love and desire often go hand in hand. How do our ideas of desire here in the U.S. differ from those in the East, like India?

Nicole Willock: I like to look at these classical texts from India, like the Mahabharata or the Upanishads. But one of the ways that we look at this is these four goals in life according to these texts. And there's generally considered four different goals, and they also roughly correspond to different time periods of adult life. And kama is one of those. So desire or pleasure is a part of a familial life. So after you're married and you want to start a family, kama is an especially important aspect of one's life. And this is um, especially this idea of sexual desire. The term for not so much that romantic love or that—that familial love, another idea is that at the end of our life, right, you really concentrate on this idea of moksha, which is liberation, and liberation from karma, liberation from life. So these exist all in these texts, and they really um outline this way of living a meaningful life. Yeah.

Matt Darroch: What about Buddhism? Talk to me about the Four Noble Truths and—and what they have to say about love, sex, and desire.

Nicole Willock: Yeah, when we look at the Buddhist texts, we mostly focus on the desire aspect of it because, you know, according to the First Noble Truth, life is suffering, or dukkha, like it's—it's permeated by this notion of suffering. And the Second Noble Truth is that desire is the origin of suffering. Now, desire is often tanha, or or kind of craving or thirst. And that—that desire is to often to satisfy one's instinctual drives, but it can be also a desire for things to stay the same, right? Um, or also a desire to avoid unpleasant feelings. And then the Third Noble Truth is just a—a kind of simple kind of cognitive thing where we can overcome this suffering by practicing the Fourth Noble Truth, the Eightfold Path, right? And then when it comes to this Eightfold Path of—of practicing Buddhism, it gets more complicated because that path, as Buddhism spread from the Indian subcontinent to across Asia, and now really across the world, how that path is interpreted is—is different and then is so bound with cultural expectations. So desire is—is almost a—a paradox, right? Because on one hand, it's this cause of suffering, right? But on the other hand, we all have it, right? We all have this kind of thirst, we all have—this is—this is something that, the reason why it's called a—a truth is because this is something common that, that, you know, shared by—by really all sentient beings. Like we all need to, you know, literally drink, right? Like, desire, the same word is, we have that same craving for things, right? And so it's both this kind of life force, right? Desire is this life force, and also this paradox of—of causing suffering. And that's why the Middle Way approach is so beautiful, you know, this like idea of the Middle Way, you can't pull the arrow too tight or too loose, you have to just get it just right. That Middle Way is finding that balance.

Matt Darroch: You teach about Tantra at the tail end of the class. What is Tantra? Is it a type of yoga?

Nicole Willock: Uh, Tantra's actually a category of texts, but it can be yoga, right? Some of the texts can be um yogic, and that's the one I teach. There's a really wonderful book by Nida Chenagtsang called Karmamudra: The Yoga of Bliss. And again, it helps us understand the body, which, you know, again, most students come into the class, "Oh, I understand the body in this certain way, right? We—we have our biology classes and anatomy lessons and all of this." But one of the things I try to show is that the body's not always conceived of in the same way in different cultures, and again, in different historical contexts. Uh, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang's book is really wonderful because it's a really easy read in a lot of ways. It—it breaks down a lot of the key ideas of the yoga of bliss, and teaches about really that one needs to understand one's own body in order to achieve bliss, whether that's for oneself or in sexual union or whatever. 

But one of the ways that it's understood is that the body is just understood in different ways. And there's these three main components, if you will. There's one, the the wind, which is long, and then there's channels, which are in Tibetan sa, and then there's this kind of essence or tikle, right? And the way that this is kind of understood is that the wind moves through the body, kind of like a horse. The channels are like roads in the body, and tikle are like the essence or the the mind, which is the the rider that that moves them.

So the idea is that through yogic practices, you know, you can control the the channels and the wind in your own body and that that is what can lead to bliss but it takes lots of practice and Tibetan yoga is a little it draws from the different traditions of yoga when you look at Tibetan medicine is really such a fascinating history apparently there were Greek doctors or medicinal practitioners and then Chinese medicine, and then Indian medicine, the Ayurvedic tradition, all meeting in Tibet in you know back in eighth, ninth century, 10th century, and this is how the the kind of medical text formed, and then became more canonical later in the 12th, 13th century. 

But this idea of the body is a really it's a fascinating way for students to understand that even the most kind of basic concepts of how we understand our body is also culturally bound. You know, it's really is it's what we're taught, it's how we learn, it's what our our family teaches us, what our our schools teach us, is what society as a whole through social media and other means teaches us, and so it helps I think understand that the the world is such a rich place, and there's not one, yeah, one definition of love, sex, or desire.

Matt Darroch: You know, there's been some talk about how young people are having less sex than older generations. I'm curious: are  your students pretty squeamish when learning and talking about this stuff, or are they, you know, still  as interested as ever?

Nicole Willock: Well, you know, I think I started teaching this class post COVID, so I noticed that they're much more comfortable talking about things. I use this annotation tool called Perusall in my classes, which allows them to read text and then to comment. They have to annotate the text and then they comment on each other's annotations. Right? They have to ask a question and then comment on it, and they're definitely really like those discussions are so rich and not not filtered very much to do with the text, or but you know they'll get into the details more there. 

Whereas in class, it does tend to be a little bit more reserved, and certainly you know it has to be a safe space. I think that's really key in the classroom is that you create the safe space, and you know what happens in the classes is you know really important to honor each other's different viewpoints, and that not everybody's going to agree with each other, and that's okay. And that you know to just have that basic respect for one another's viewpoints and the material, quite frankly, because some of the material is is different, you know, than than they're used to, and and that's okay, and and they don't have to agree with it, and that's okay too. But it's important that we take things, I think, seriously. Like that that there's a serious point of view, and what people say and what people read, is that we take it with a certain level of respect, and and that's really important. 

So I don't think squeamish is the right word. I think they're shy, just because this generation, my like my daughter had her first year of high school all online. So, and she's an only child. So, you know, you don't get a lot of social interaction, and so that that social aspect of of talking with one another, that's actually the magic of the classroom, and we need to be talking to each other. We need to be having these iterative processes. We need to be saying, "Hey, how do you understand love? How do you understand brotherly love? What is this thing called tantra? I've heard this before, but what is this here? You know, and those like iterative processes, those dialogs are just so crucial because we're we're just living in this kind of one way world right now of like social media says this and therefore that is right and um yeah that it's not hello you know this is you know as soon as we start diving in a little deeper we understand that it actually now it's really much more complex on that, and you know, it's these definitions are humans love to try to make sense of things. Like we love to put definitions on things, but the fact is, is that humanness is really messy.

Matt Darroch:We've been talking about your students, but what about you? What what has Asian philosophy. Taught you about love, sex, and desire that you've really clung to in your life.

Nicole Willock: I think, like that, I always go back to the concept of ningy, which is compassion. That's often how it's sort of generally translated. But I think that idea is that I I really try to embody this this notion that you know no matter who or what I encounter in this life is that I treat them with a certain level of respect and treat everyone the same and it's almost impossible to do but I really try to do that I just think it's so important that we treat people with respect and animals and nature, that that sense of compassion to have a noble heart. That's what I aspired to the most. Yeah.

Matt Darroch: Well, Nicole, I've had a blast talking with you. Thanks for sharing your insight on With Good Reason.

Nicole Willock: Thank you, Matt. It's been a pleasure.

Matt Darroch: Nicole Willock is a professor of Asian religions and chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Director of Asian Studies at Old Dominion University. 

With Good Reason, is produced by Virginia Humanities, which acknowledges the Monican Nation, the original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Our production team is Sarah McConnell, Allison Quantz and Lauren Francis. Special thanks to Jennie Taylor for booking assistance, and to Lamar Ford at CNU, Chris Borros at WMRA, and to Jordan Christie at WHRV for recording assistance. For the podcast, go to withgoreasonradio.org. I'm Matt Darroch. Thanks for listening.