Do we need help with how to love better?

I remember when we first arrived as freshmen at Flinders Medical School in Adelaide, Australia, that was in 1993 when I was 19. We were taken around Flinders University Campus on orientation. When we got to the school of psychology, our guide told us that we could come here counselling if we needed help. He gave the example of failing to concentrate on our studies because of issues with our girlfriend or love troubles.

I remember thinking to myself and then discussing with my colleagues how ridiculous it sounded. I mean, at Chancellor College in Malawi, where I had already done two years of university, we did not deal with love troubles like that. I did not even have an understanding of the concept of counselling and its relationships to things like problems with a girlfriend.

It was only very much later in my life that I remembered this event, after I had had a problematic love life. I wonder what would have happened had I tried to use the service, because my love problems had started to manifest before I got to Australia. I really wish I had known how important it was then to get some counselling, but I did miss my chance.

For the longest time, I never once thought love is something for which we must deliberately develop skills. Now I know, after many blunders, that we do not just happen to be good lovers. We have to learn and practice it. I truly believe we can be better lovers by learning about it. It is not just something spontaneous. Some of us come from broken families and we just cannot be good lovers until we address our deficiencies. Period. Of course, some personalities may be better predisposed to loving, but it is not all of us. And then also, even if we are good, we can become even better.

This poster from Rhodes University reminds me of how we really need to help our adolescents with the tools to become skilled lovers if that is what they are looking for in life. I wish our universities would emulate Rhodes University.

For us who are already grown-up and are poor lovers and yet we yearn to be good lovers, well, there is also counselling for that.