Our culture has a lot to say about relationships.

From a young age, boys are often taught what pursuit looks like: open the door, buy the flowers, remember the chocolate, carry the groceries, protect, provide, cherish. These gestures can be beautiful. And girls are often raised inside a framework that quietly teaches them they are the one to be pursued — the prize, the one to be won.

Over time that can create an imbalance: one side learns to give in visible ways, while the other learns to evaluate what is given.

But I don’t think the deeper issue is male or female. The deeper issue is that we are taught the behaviors associated with love without ever being taught the substance of love itself.

The script problem

Flowers are not love by themselves. Chocolates are not love by themselves. Cooking dinner, keeping the family schedule, raising children, earning the paycheck, remembering the anniversary — none of these are automatically love, simply because they are good and necessary things.

They can absolutely be expressions of love. But they can also become scripts — things we perform because somewhere we were told, “this is what a good man does,” or “this is what a good woman does.”

And that is where relationships quietly begin to starve. A person can be highly responsible and still not be relationally present. A person can be constantly busy for their family and still never create an atmosphere of tenderness, rest, and emotional safety. Not because practical service doesn’t matter — it matters deeply — but because service becomes most powerful when it flows from intentionality rather than inherited obligation.

A better question

The question is not just, “Are we doing loving things?” The question is, “Have we actually become loving people?”

What if we raised boys and girls alike to understand love not merely as romance, duty, or performance — but as identity? What if both learned to listen without interruption, serve without keeping score, initiate affection, pursue understanding, and give without living off the guarantee of return?

The strongest relationships aren’t built on cultural scripts. They’re built on two people who know how to love from the inside out. Love should not merely be something we do because culture handed us a script. It should be something we have become.

As always — don’t let me do your thinking for you. Sit with it honestly this week: where in your closest relationships are you performing a role, and where are you genuinely present? The two can look identical from the outside. Only you know the source.

— Reggie