Shadowing Practice: our conception of love is messed up. - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This video is sponsored by Wren. Is love an art?

Then it requires knowledge and effort.

Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one falls into if one is lucky?

This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.

Not that people think that love is not important.

They are starved for it.

They watch endless numbers of films and happy and unhappy love stories.

They listen to hundreds of trashy songs about love.

Yet hardly anyone thinks that there's anything that needs to be learned about love.

Scrolling through posts about romantic relationships nowadays, I kind of hate it.

Not because I'm a cynic or I find PDA to be cringey.

In fact, I love love.

I think it should be central to the way we live our lives.

But there are several beliefs about romantic relationships that I see commonly floating around on the internet that bug me.

There's the if-he-wanted-to-he-would group, the never-settle advocates, the constant talk about red flags and standards,

and letting random strangers on TikTok make you question your healthy relationship.

You don't find that suspicious?

As a preface, I'll probably talk more so about things I see and hear from straight women, since that's what I identify as.

But the fundamental concepts that I talk about for love do apply to all romantic relationships, regardless of gender or sexuality.

Before I get to specific content I see online, let's talk about two broader questions.

Is love passive or active?

In other words, is love a state that exists independently and is waiting for us to fall into?

Or does it require our participation and effort to bring about?

2. Is our conception of love grounded in anything real?

Or are we comparing our relationships to hyper-real love?

Now we can't love if we're all dead from climate change, right?

Smooth segue into a sponsorship, I know.

Well, I'm here to briefly talk about Wren.

Wren is a website where you can take a short quiz to calculate your carbon footprint and find ways to reduce it.

They have multiple carbon reduction projects that you can help fund, such as tree planting, mineral weathering, and rainforest protection.

Once you sign up to make a monthly contribution to offset your carbon footprint, you receive monthly updates about the projects you support.

You get to see what your money is spent on, with photos and details of every tree planted, every acre reforested, and every ton of carbon offset.

Check out the link in the description box for more info.

The first 100 people who sign up using my link will have 10 extra trees planted in their name.

Thank you again, Ren, for sponsoring this video.

Okay, so first, is love passive or active.

Based on the quote I recited at the beginning of the video, you can probably guess that I believe love is active.

And I want to be clear, a lot of the things

that I will be saying in this section of the video can be found in Eric Fromm's The Art of Loving.

It was written in 1956, so obviously some of the things are outdated, but I still feel as though a lot of it is applicable to present day.

See, Fromm notices that most people view love through a passive lens.

Love is somehow out there waiting for us to stumble upon.

You hear phrases such as, true love comes to those who wait.

Do not chase love, it will just find you when the time is right.

And so people focus on making themselves as lovable as possible rather than loving.

Fromm likens dating to modern capitalism.

Modern capitalism works on the premise of mutually beneficial exchange.

I buy your product and you get my money.

To participate in the dating world is to place yourself in what Fromm calls the personality market.

You try to make yourself as lovable as possible, which is really dependent on the time period and culture.

For a long time, the dream man was ambitious, physically strong, a protector.

But now there's a lot more demand for men who crochet and will cry into our shoulders.

A lot of people also try to make themselves lovable for certain types of people.

For example, if person one wants a goth titty GF and person two wants a computer science boy,

they're probably going to dress differently and get well versed in different talking points.

But by then, they've already become selective about which market they're putting themselves out onto do,

they are already deciding what kind of love should come their way.

And so really, love becomes what will satisfy your desire to not be lonely.

Fromm compares this self-interested search for a partner to a bargain, because you can almost think of it like a graph.

You have fallen in love when you find the optimal sweet spot between social value and desire for you.

This strategical exchange doesn't really treat people as people.

Instead, we become commodities on this personality market, and we're all trying to increase our market value by adhering to what others want.

I know a lot of straight women are happy

and think it's quite progressive that more straight men are moving from an alpha gym bro lifestyle to adopting more nerdy,

soft, or feminine traits.

many comments being like, oh men are finally listening to what women want.

And don't get me wrong, I definitely prefer the latter type of men as well.

But should we really be happy about this?

Like the men are just adhering to changing social values, to be more desirable on this personality market.

But is a man who is traditionally masculine necessarily a worse lover than a man written by a woman?

Instead of congratulating people for becoming a better commodity to soothe our awareness of our existential loneliness,

why do we not focus on loving itself?

This is what I mean by passive versus active conceptions of love.

Someone who thinks of love passively asks, how do I become loved?

Someone who thinks of love actively asks, how do I love?

When relationships end, people tend to focus on how to improve their lovability by working out, getting their hair done, buying new clothes,

advancing their career, as exemplified by post-breakup glow-up videos on YouTube.

I'm gonna have a post-breakup glow-up, basically just doing my hair and makeup.

So we're gonna get my hair dyed, we're gonna self-tan, we're gonna whiten my teeth, we're gonna do a face mask, exfoliate, wax my eyebrows, wax my upper lip, shades, do a full face of makeup,

hopefully put extensions in, get my nails done, get my toes done.

We're gonna do the most.

And yes, I know people often claim that these transformations are for self-love and not others,

but I'm highly suspicious of how changing so much of your physical appearance is self-love.

Sure, you will feel more confident, but it's because you now feel more desirable to others.

We're always so concerned with being loved.

I know it's a popular joke for people to comment things like, throwing myself off of the Empire State Building,

or eating glass for breakfast under happy couple posts.

And it's funny, okay, don't get me wrong, but it's funny because we feel that there is a level of truth to it.

Seeing other people in happy relationships prompts us to feel sad or slightly jealous that we are not being loved enough.

Rarely do they ever make us think about how we can improve as a lover

and maybe help bring that kind of love into our lives.

We seem to take our concept of love itself for granted.

Most people assume that love is just intuitively known and it does not need to be learned.

Everyone will just naturally know what it is.

But this stems from the problem of treating love as an object, a noun, a feeling, something that just happens to us.

Fromm and also bell hooks, rest in peace queen, say we need to shift our perspective and understand love as an activity.

Fromm actually calls love an art and just like being good at any art such as playing an instrument,

dancing, painting, it requires constant practice, dedication, and faith.

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Just as how you can't be a good piano player by only playing when you feel like it,

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you can't be good at love if you only choose to love when it is convenient and enjoyable for you.

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Fromm also says that an art requires faith.

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When you practice an art and you run into a difficult skill, rather than give up because it's hard,

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you have to have faith in eventually succeeding and dedicate effort to that art until you succeed.

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The same is with love.

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I'll get more into this later on with the overuse of the term red flags,

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but I feel like people start to doubt their whole relationship just because they saw one random person on TikTok say something.

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Of course, if there's constant cheating, lying, abuse, etc. These are clear signs to leave.

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Wiring our brains to think about love as something active rather

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than passive is actually really helpful in separating love from abuse and dishonesty.

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I want to read a passage from Bell Hook's All About Love that I really like.

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To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in

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which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.

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We are often taught we have no control over our feelings.

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Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do.

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We also accept that our actions have consequences.

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To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions, such as that one simply falls in love,

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without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as crimes of passion, i.e. he killed her because he loved her so much.

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If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.

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I think that most importantly, when you work on an art, creating a wonderful result is what leaves you with fulfillment, right?

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For instance, by finishing a beautiful painting, an artist bestows meaning upon their life because the painting, as a product of the artist's efforts,

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reflects their incredible abilities back onto themselves.

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The artist realizes that they are the reason why this canvas is so beautiful.

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Thus, love is to nurture the flourishing of someone else, and you recognize your own worth through their flourishing.

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If we treat love as an active art rather than a thing, love is about giving rather than receiving.

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A lot of people think that giving equals sacrifice, and that's why it's so honorable to do it.

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But Fromm says that giving does not have to require us sacrificing anything.

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When done for the sake of giving and not some other goal.

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Giving is actually the best way to combat our existential loneliness.

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When you give, you experience your own strength, energy, and aliveness.

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This is true when you give anything, such as giving money or giving food to your children, but this is especially true in giving love.

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Because when you give love, you give all the things that make up you.

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Your interests, your emotions, your passions, your knowledge.

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Quote, he enhances the other's sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness.

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Sadly, in heterosexual relationships, I still think this idea of the man being the giver

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and the woman being the receiver is present.

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And a lot of women happily endorse this idea because it's nice and easy to be the receiver.

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My man should ask me to be his Valentine.

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He should be giving me flowers.

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My man should be doing this and that for me.

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I see this sentiment get worse because of social media portraying perfect images of people's boyfriends.

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You know, the ones where a girl shows off all the sweet things her boyfriend does for her, and the comments are filled with stuff like, my standards just got higher,

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why doesn't my boyfriend do this for me?

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If he wanted to, he would.

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Again, the dominant narrative here is that love equals being loved, which equals getting stuff.

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Of course, it feels nice to receive things, and it's important to have a lover that gives things as symbols of love.

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But ladies, Because basing love on what you receive makes love a passive commodity.

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You gotta focus on love as an action and give back.

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And giving love is not about giving material objects.

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It's about giving you as a person.

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Sharing your thoughts, your humor, your joy, and your sadness.

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That's what giving love is.

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One of the most loving couples I've come across are Hannah and Shane.

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They talk about how so many people pity Hannah as some poor sacrificial giver

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because they think she just gives without receiving things we typically associate with love back, such as traditional forms of pleasure.

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One time, a woman who asked if I was Shane's cousin.

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Yeah.

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And he said, no, this is my girlfriend.

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And she came up to me and took my hands and began to cry and was like, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

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Like, you're an angel.

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which was super uncomfortable because that insinuates that I'm an angel because Shane is a terrible choice.

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People wonder why Hannah, who has high social value as a pretty woman, would partake in this unfair exchange.

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It goes back to this dominant idea of love being finding the best bargain on the market.

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But Shane and Hannah don't care about this dominant conception of love they love each other

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because they give their personhood to each other, and they love the person they each are, without primarily focused on what's in it for them.

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At this point, maybe you're like, okay, Olivia, good job on becoming the most idealistic lover girl with zero connection to reality.

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As romantic as giving for the sake of giving sounds, without care about receiving material gifts.

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We all want to feel loved.

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Doing the loving is so much effort, and I'm too insecure to not crave being loved.

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Plus, you can't just erase the value that material gifts have in our capitalist culture.

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And to all that I say, you are right.

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You are 100% right.

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You got me.

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Which is why proper loving is counter-culture.

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It's near impossible because it's so opposed to how current culture is?

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How can I focus on giving when I'm surrounded by people on social media showing off what they receive?

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When our culture is so based on consumerism, on who has what?

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And obviously, I'm going to be obsessed with increasing my social value when that's how I'm constantly judged.

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How can I dedicate that much time to practicing love as an art

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when society tells me there are other important things to do, like having a good career.

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I need to spend time on school and work, and so I only have time to practice love on a select number of people.

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And for all these reasons, that's why I say our conception of love is messed up.

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According to Jean Baudrillard, we interact more with what he calls hyper-reality than reality itself.

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To explain what hyperreality is, I think it's best to just dive into one of Baudrillard's examples.

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Consider the movie Apocalypse Now, a film about the Vietnam War.

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The acting, the special effects, the sets, the editing.

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Everything about the film is made so that when we watch it on our screen, it feels as real as possible.

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Heck, it becomes more real than the real war.

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Most of our understanding of the real Vietnam War comes from brief video clips online, some news articles documenting the big highlights,

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maybe a speech from some politician, but we have no real experience of the real Vietnam War.

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And the little bits and pieces we get from the news is an extremely watered-down version of the war.

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They tell us how many people died, show short clips of soldiers fighting and innocent residents harmed, but what about the thousands of stories that go unheard.

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The film Apocalypse Now ends up actually feeling more real than the real war.

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When people talk about the Vietnam War, they picture scenes from the movie rather than the actual war.

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The media that was originally an imitation of reality ends up being more real, thus hyper real.

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The hyper real was originally a copy of something real, but then we start to interact with the hyperreal more than reality.

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And so new forms of media end up imitating hyperreality rather than reality.

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It becomes a loop of copies, copying copies, copying copies, until our lives are looking at copies of copies of copies.

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I believe Stephen West from Philosophize This gave an example of how TV shows originally drew inspiration from real people

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and real lives.

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But But over time, new TV shows became inspired by past TV shows, creating shows that are now completely detached from reality.

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For instance, How I Met Your Mother or Friends comes out, and we, in real life,

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start to frame what happens to us in relation to these TV shows.

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We create character tropes all the time that we then form our real relationships around, such as people saying, I want to be just like Lily and Marshall.

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Monica and Chandler.

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We see people have magical love at first sight moments on screen

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and then build expectations of having the same magical feeling in real life.

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The imaginary dictates reality.

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These expectations and tropes constrain us in thinking love needs to be a certain way

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or that if we start off as the hyper girlfriend calm boyfriend trope we need to maintain that trope.

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But the thing is, these expectations and tropes are not based in reality.

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Now how does everything we've talked about apply to common phrases online?

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Let's start with, if he wanted to, he would.

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Two things about this mindset bother me.

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One, it builds the expectation that our partners, specifically men, should know what to do and know what we want without us communicating it.

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Two, as many people have pointed out, it's literally contradictory.

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Girls say, if he wanted to, he would, and so they don't tell their man what they want because he should just do it if he wants to.

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But then if guys had the same mindset, then they would not make the first move either because they're thinking if she wanted to, she would.

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And so no one would do anything.

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Also, sometimes people want to do things but are not sure if they should, are scared, anxious, shy.

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Or maybe they value your input, which I really hope they do.

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Communication is so, so important.

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If you truly love someone, you would not base your partner's worth on whether they give you exactly what you want.

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You would care about how much you're giving them and whether you're both having a reciprocal relationship.

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Before Valentine's Day, I saw quite a few TikToks talking about how women in heterosexual relationships should wait to see

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if their man does something romantic for them without saying anything.

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Or if you do say something, you should only mention it once.

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If your man doesn't do anything or forgets that thing you had said once, it's a sign to end the relationship.

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And they know that it's important to you.

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You would only have had to say it once, right?

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Because if they loved you, they would remember things that were important to you and it would be important to them too.

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Move in silence on Valentine's Day.

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Don't say anything.

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Hide the gift you're getting them.

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Hide the things that you're doing for them.

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Not in a manipulative way, just wait.

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If you walk away from that day disappointed,

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feeling unappreciated, feeling alone, feeling like, ugh, they're right.

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It's just a day.

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It's commercialized.

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It doesn't mean anything.

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They show me they love me every day, so it doesn't really matter, and I do care about them, and I do...

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Stop.

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Okay?

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The thing that bugged me the most is that these TikToks would say, even if he shows you that he loves you every other day,

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if he misses the mark on this one commercialized, arbitrary day, then sorry, he clearly doesn't love you.

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There is so much concern around what can my man do for me, can he meet my standards,

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that this one day can determine the trajectory of the rest of your relationship?

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I know it's different for everyone.

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Maybe your boyfriend has amazing memory and grew up in a loving environment.

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But for my boyfriend and I, we both have a lot going on in our lives.

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And so it's unreasonable to expect us to remember something someone said once.

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Just because I forget that he wanted a poke bowl today for dinner does not mean he's not important to me.

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My boyfriend also grew up in a household without much celebratory spirit.

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He didn't receive gifts for his birthday, for Christmas.

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Him and his friends never even exchange gifts on special occasions.

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And so, is it really fair for me to judge his love based on what he gives me, if he has never been taught to give material gifts?

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Even as I'm saying this, I understand how hard it can be to not let these little things affect you.

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We are surrounded by people who post picture-perfect moments of their relationship, and it constantly makes us fixate on how good the love we receive is.

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We are convinced that we should never settle, that there is some person out there who will give us

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a love as perfect as the ones we see in films and TV shows.

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I experience this sometimes too.

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Um, okay, that was a lie.

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I actually experience this all the time.

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One of my greatest fears is not being loved.

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so honestly, this whole video is almost like a lecture to myself.

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I've definitely got a lot to work on in the realm of love, so please don't think I feel superior to everyone, because I am not.

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But that's why it's important to have a good level of self-love, so that you can squash paranoid worries about not being loved enough,

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and judge your relationship with a more clear head.

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And remember that these movies are not real.

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They are hyper-real.

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The love on your TV screen looks more perfect and more real than reality, so it makes you crave that hyper-reality.

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But it is a mere copy.

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Red flags is another term that has gained immense popularity.

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I think it is absolutely important to watch out for red flags in a relationship, but this term has gotten overused.

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People watch a 15 second clip online and suddenly everyone's got a psychology degree.

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Here's how author Kim Baker defined red flags.

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Red flags are whispers from our intuition that something isn't quite right.

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A red flag is that sinking feeling we get in our stomachs when something bad happens.

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They are slivers of evidence, usually showing up early on, that this relationship is not the right one for us.

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A red flag warns that deal breakers are headed our way.

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Now, I want to place emphasis on deal breakers, something that we absolutely cannot tolerate or is too much effort to fix.

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Conversely, not knowing how to cook or having a perm is not a red flag.

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That's just called not your preference.

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Don't let random strangers who know nothing about your relationship control you and tell you what is a red flag.

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I hope we all dedicate more time to thinking about how to love others,

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how to build self-love, and avoid letting hyper-real displays of love mislead us.

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You can like and sub if you want, leave a comment if you want.

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Thank you so much for watching, let's keep talking, and I hope to hear from you soon.

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Bye!

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59 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 290 sentences and 4106 words to shadow. The speech runs for 25:38. The speaker talks at a natural 160 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

passive /ˈpæs.ɪv/ (adjective) — Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction.
romantic /ɹoʊˈmæn(t)ɪk/ (adjective) — Fantastic, unrealistic (of an idea etc.); fanciful, sentimental, impractical (of a person).
lover /ˈlʌvɚ/ (noun) — One who loves and cares for another person in a romantic way; a sweetheart, love, soulmate, boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse.
expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen.
clip /klɪp/ (noun) — Something which clips or grasps; a device for attaching one object to another.
dominant /ˈdɑmənənt/ (adjective) — Ruling; governing; prevailing
suspicious /səˈspɪʃ.əs/ (adjective) — Arousing suspicion.
conception /kənˈsɛpʃən/ (noun) — The act of conceiving.
dedicate /ˈdɛdɪˌkeɪt/ (verb) — To set apart for a deity or for religious purposes; consecrate.
angel /ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/ (noun) — An incorporeal and holy or semidivine messenger from a deity or other divine entity, traditionally depicted as a youthful, winged figure in flowing robes.
sake /ˈseɪ̯k/ (noun) — Cause, interest or account.
settle /ˈsɛtəl/ (verb) — To determine (something which was exposed to doubt or question); to resolve conclusively; to set or fix (a time, an order of succession, etc).
phrase /ˈfɹeɪ̯z/ (noun) — A short written or spoken expression.
stranger /ˈstɹeɪnd͡ʒɚ/ (noun) — A person whom one does not know; a person who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance.
magical /ˈmæd͡ʒ.ɪ.kəl/ (adjective) — Of, relating to, or by means of magic.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
do for (verb) — To doom; to bring about the demise of someone; to injure or harm someone.
end up (verb) — To bring to a conclusion.
fall in (verb) — To collapse inwards.
fall into (verb) — To go into something by falling.
hear from (verb) — To receive updates or opinions from (someone).
think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
wait for (verb) — To wait until the specified event occurs.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 63 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: smooth /smuːð/, bother /ˈbɑðɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, suspicious /səˈspɪʃ.əs/, conception /kənˈsɛpʃən/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, passion /ˈpæʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, capitalism /ˈkæp.ə.təlˌɪzm̩/, commodity /kəˈmɑdəti/, desirable /dɪˈzaɪəɹəbəl/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like passive, romantic, lover.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If he wanted to, he would · If you truly love someone, you would not · if they loved you, they would remember
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	they've already become · have fallen · I've come
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is sponsored · is based · are starved
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who sign · those who wait · possible, which is

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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