This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hey gang, Valentine's Day is coming up and today we're going to do some myth-busting

on love, sex, dating, and relationships. Before we dive into that conversation with my

guest, though, let me personally do a little bit of myth-busting on Valentine's Day itself.

Turns out if you do just a little bit of research, you will find that as with many things in

our culture, when you scratch the surface, there's a very different story than what you might

have been told. These days, Valentine's Day is observed either voluntarily or obligatory

as a celebration of romantic relationships, except of course for little kids like my son

who will make Valentine's Day cards for everybody in his class about which more in a second.

For the most part, though, in our culture, Valentine's Day is a highly commercialized

and monetizable celebration of romantic love. Apparently, however, its roots are quite

a bit more complex. It started as a feast day in the Christian tradition, honoring one or

more martyred saints named Valentine. According to the legend, one of these saint valentines

was executed by the Romans for ministering to persecuted Christians. In other words,

the roots of Valentine's Day might involve state-sponsored murder. My point here is not to

ruin this whole thing for you, but just to put it in perspective. The history of the day

is not what you might have expected. More importantly, I would propose that perhaps we are celebrating

it in an overly narrow way, and that that might speak to our overly narrow view of love

in general. In other words, elementary school kids and their teachers may be onto something

when they dole out Valentine's Day cards in a platonic way. Often when we talk about love,

we restrict it to a very narrow band of human relationships. You may have heard me say this

before. I like to think about love in a much broader way as our evolutionarily wired capacity

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