This TED talk by Katie Hood explores the distinction between healthy and unhealthy love, emphasizing the importance of recognizing warning signs in relationships. Through personal stories and examples, Hood highlights the subtle and overt behaviors that can lead to relationship abuse, aiming to educate and empower individuals to foster healthier connections.

So when you think about a child, a close friend, or a romantic partner, the word "love" probably comes to mind, and instantly, other emotions rush in: joy and hope, excitement, trust, and security. And yes, sometimes sadness and disappointment. There might not be a word in the dictionary that more of us are connected to than "love." Yet, given its central importance in our lives, isn't it interesting that we're never explicitly taught how to love? We build friendships, navigate early romantic relationships, get married, and bring babies home from the hospital with the expectation that we'll figure it out. But the truth is, we often harm and disrespect the ones we love. It can be subtle things, like guilting a friend into spending time with you, sneaking a peek at your partner's texts, or shaming a child for their lack of effort at school. One hundred percent of us will be on the receiving end of unhealthy relationship behaviors, and one hundred percent of us will do unhealthy things. It's part of being human. In its worst form, the harm we inflict on loved ones shows up as abuse and violence. Relationship abuse is something that one in three women and one in four men will experience in their lifetime. Now, if you're like most people, when you hear those stats, you'll go, "Oh, no, no, no, that would never happen to me." It's instinctual to move away from the words "abuse" and "violence," to think that they happen to someone else, somewhere else. But the truth is, unhealthy relationships and abuse are all around us; we just call them different things and ignore the connection. Abuse sneaks up on us, disguised in unhealthy love. I work for an organization called OneLove, started by a family whose daughter, Yardley, was killed by her ex-boyfriend. This was a tragedy no one saw coming. But when they looked back, they realized the warning signs were there; just no one understood what they were seeing. Called "crazy" or "drama" or "too much drinking," his actions weren't understood to be what they really were, which was clear signs of danger. Her family realized that if anyone had been educated about these signs, her death could have been prevented. So today, we're on a mission to make sure that others have the information that Yardley and her friends didn't. We have three main goals: give all of us a language for talking about a subject that's quite awkward and uncomfortable to discuss, empower a whole front line—namely friends—to help, and in the process, improve all of our ability to love better. To do this, it's always important to start by illuminating the unhealthy signs that we frequently miss. Our work really focuses on creating content to start conversations with young people. As you'd expect, most of our content is pretty serious, given the subject at hand. But today, I'm going to use one of our more lighthearted, yet still thought-provoking pieces, "The Couplets," to illuminate five markers of unhealthy love. The first is intensity. "I haven't seen you in a couple of days. I've missed you." "Aw, I've missed you, too." "I haven't seen you in five minutes. It feels like a lifetime. What have you been doing without me for five whole minutes?" "It's been three minutes." Anybody recognize that? I don't know. I do. Abusive relationships don't start out abusive. They start out exciting and exhilarating. There's an intensity of affection and emotion, a rush. It feels really good. You feel so lucky, like you've hit the jackpot.