"If you build a life with your relationship at the center, everything else gets pushed to the perimeter" (Hill, 2023).

In a provocative Atlantic article, seasoned journalist Faith Hill makes the case that there is often such a focus on love—in so many cultures—that relationships outside of primary romantic relationships often get pushed to the side in one's life. Hill argues that this pattern, which seems to be relatively common based on various data sources, has adverse effects on both individuals within relationships as well as on relationships themselves.

To be fair, her article hardly bashes the concept of love. To this point, she even writes, therein, that "...Finding love is a beautiful, lucky thing."

This all said, the main gist of her article focuses on what she calls the Love/Life Balance—which suggests from various angles that people who overly focus on their romantic relationships lose out on all kinds of other offerings in life, such as hobbies, non-romantic relationships, and more.

While I don't necessarily disagree fully with this point, as someone who has studied different facets of love empirically for decades, I wish to highlight why focusing on love actually has the capacity to lead to all kinds of positive life outcomes. We can think of this piece as something of a polite counter-response to Hill's well-written and well-researched article.

A great deal of literature in the behavioral sciences underscores the fact that having a truly loving relationship provides extraordinary benefits in life. Further, a great deal of literature, going back decades, suggests that love is an essential need that drives the broader human experience.

For instance, Abraham Maslow (1943), an iconic behavioral scientist, made the case that the need for love is one of the core needs that drives human behavior.

To support this point, consider a study of popular music conducted by Hobbs and Gallup (2011). This study examined the content of songs that rose high in the charts of various genres (rap, country, rock) across several years. This research found that more than 90% of popular songs,........

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