Love Concentration
Rose Wu ’25
In a stressful and overbearing environment like NMH, it’s crucial for people to realize that love resides in our surroundings, not just in people but between people.
Illustration by Serafina Wilson ’26
“There was a couple in my class. I was aware that they seemed to be dating, but I wasn't sure. And we did a DNA extraction as a class activity, and then when we ran the gel a couple days later, they came up with both positive and negative for the thing. That's impossible for a single person to do. And so what that meant, necessarily, is that, oh God, the boy had the DNA of the girl in his mouth” —Carl Sangree
In a stressful and overbearing environment like NMH, it’s crucial for people to realize that love resides in our surroundings, not just in people but between people. High school love can seem whimsical and neglectable, but loving and being in love is always as important and noble a pursuit as grades and getting into college. In an effort to increase the love concentration on campus, I set out on a journey to explore two main questions: What do you think is an obstacle to expressing love or entering relationships at NMH? And what about being in love is important to you?
“It feels like being on a reality TV show.”
How many instances of intimacy have been sparked online? Yet how many times have couples sat face-to-face, with their faces blurred in the light of their phones? A “double-edged sword” was what many people called the apps that both connect and disconnect us from each other. For a teacher who’s been immersed in the conversations of teenagers for almost a decade, Pete Masteller finds social media problematic, diminishing the nuances of relationships that would otherwise be heightened during in-person interactions. Speaking with heavy sighs while thinking back to his past teaching experiences, he said, “Before social media and phones, people who were interested in each other or flirting with each other would talk face to face as much as possible.” In-person interactions are piled with complicated and inconspicuous movements and body language, all of which go unseen in online exchanges. A question Pete proposes to students is: “How are you talking to people face-to-face, including people you have a crush on, or people you want to flirt with?”
Another fear Pete has about online interactions is the lack of vulnerability. “If you ask somebody out face-to-face,” he said, “you're being very vulnerable. They might say no, or they might give you a look.” Through this in-person interaction, he explained, people are building up courage and social skills. Learning to expose yourself and to be exposed to nuanced interactions that involve eye-contact, body language, toneful voices, and countless other signals that go unnoticed is a healthy life lesson that Pete advocates for. “I fear that although social media has done many good things to connect people,” Pete said, “people who use it have also lost many of the interpersonal skills of asking someone out or dealing with the messiness of humanity.”
Carl Sangree, a newly-wed biotech teacher, was also concerned about the possible pitfalls of over relying on social media for dating. As an echo to Pete’s worries, Carl is uneasy about the overflowing pool of connections social media seems to offer. “The risk of social media,” he said, “is that people expect too much out of their dating partner because there's this illusion of abundance. Like all these people who you would normally forget about, you're aware of what they're doing constantly.” Because we’re able to be informed and updated instantaneously on everyone’s life, regardless of how well we know them, the people around us may start to dim away in light of the glorious virtual posts and profiles.
Social media seems to be a major hurdle on the path to a long-term relationship. However, there are more barriers, which are unique features of NMH, that only students who live and experience it would know.
Grace Bird, a four-year senior, said that the often too-tight-knit environment at NMH makes it “impossible to love a person fully.” She and Parker Toyloy, another four-year senior, both said that being in a relationship at NMH could feel uncomfortable from the amount of attention couples receive. “It feels like being on a reality TV show,” Grace said, “like we’re being watched at all times by students and faculty.”
“Even if you just hold hands, sometimes there'll be someone who takes a picture and sends it to your group chat,” Parker said. Across campus, students say dating at NMH is an experience filled with trying to hide holding hands and seeking out a moment of privacy in a high-exposure environment. “It’s like being on display,” Grace and Parker said in unison.
This tightness of the NMH community, like social media, acts in both uniting and burdensome ways. Raymond Siu, a senior and a writer for The Arrow, said, “Sometimes, because the community is so tight, your friends and your partner cannot be apart from each other. If you're outside of NMH, sometimes you'd be like, oh, I need some time with my partner, or sometimes I just need time with my friends. And they can be separated. At NMH, I think everyone is just so close. So either you hang out with all of them, or you have to portion them out.”
The lack of privacy and the sometimes too-entangled student body are far from the only obstacles to dating. Perhaps more glaring than social media, than the forms conversations take, is the stressful nature of our environment. Grace chuckled while saying that her family would jokingly call NMH a “pressure cooker school,” which is not an inaccurate description at all. With the psychologist speaking about anxiety on NMH 360, and the health center spreading resources for mental health every finals week, stress is a key player in our community. Students’ commitments to academics, sports, and extracurriculars makes dating look like a time-consuming venture. “Stress,” Parker noted, “makes people rush into relationships. Which means that you don't really connect with the person, you're just kind of looking for stress relief, instead of a lasting relationship.”
“I'm happier”
Onto the importance of relationships.
For Pete, who has been married for 11 years, collaboration and communication skills are one of the most valuable things to be obtained in a relationship. “My wife is the person I talk to the most in a day,” Pete said, “and the person I talk to about the things that are most important.” Though not applicable to students, he also talks about how significant these skills are in raising a family and children. “It's hard,” Pete said when talking about parenting. “Children are hard and frustrating, so she and I need really good communication and collaboration to do that well, and not just fight with the children and then each other.” Also, self-described to be an incredibly independent person, Pete said that he finds himself valuing the feeling of coming home to someone who will ask you about how your day has been. “We've had a lot of hard times too,” Pete said, “but being connected to someone is, for me, a really critical part of being human.”
For Carl, relationships shine their significance when both partners are boosted by each other. “You end up sharing your strengths with someone else, and they share theirs with you in a good way,” Carl said. Similar to Pete, Carl traced back to how, when he lived alone, he lived in a very “spartan” apartment. Now, living with his wife Tara—who he describes as “way more literate” than him—he is living in a much nicer environment. “Now,” Carl says, “I live where there's pretty art on the walls, and there's books in the bookshelves, and like plants growing everywhere, and upgraded furniture.” He also talked about how he influenced Tara on having a dog and going on hikes and backpacking trips, while she influenced him on living spaces and literature. Their relationship also affected their personalities. “Tara is more sincere than I am, and I'm kind of sarcastic. And so I think I've given her, in some ways, a better sense of humor. And she’s also made me a little bit more sincere as a person.”
“We’ve retained our previous identities completely,” Carl said, “but we also get to benefit from the influence of someone who's complimentary to us.”
Similarly, Grace values when people are “being solid and having their own person” in a relationship, and not the intertwined unit that many may wish for. Additionally, after going through two starts and ends of relationships, Grace said, “I pay more attention to what I want, because now I think about all the things that I am, and how I'm still worthy and special even if I'm not in a relationship.” Grace straightened her back and said, “I'm an athlete, I'm a student, I'm a daughter, I'm a friend. My identity does not revolve around that person.”
Raymond added a notion of personal growth onto this topic, and how being in a relationship has affected his personality and behavior in positive ways. For him, the main thing that stood out was how he felt like he “cared more about what other people think.” Tilting his head, Raymond said, “I feel like you observe in more detail what other people feel. Because before I was in a relationship, I didn't really have experience of actually understanding what other people feel, like I didn’t really care.”
At last, one of the most obvious and important significance of relationships was simply the answer: “I'm happier,” which was what Parker told me when she thought about what her relationship gave her. “You know how the campus has therapy dogs?” Parker said. “You get the same hormone when you pet a dog and when you pet a human.”
“So is having a partner like having your own personal therapy dog in a way?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
