From unbreakable bonds to ‘special relationships’ – there’s a lot to learn about love from your school work.
Here are 10 of the best love lessons we can learn from all those facts and figures.
1. Romeo & Juliet
Subject: English
Sum-up: Literature’s (and Shakespeare’s) most famous teenage romance. Two 16-year-olds from warring families find each other and will do anything to be together.
Love lesson: Keep some perspective. Your high school relationships shouldn’t take over your whole life – and certainly aren’t worth falling out with family and friends for!
2. Chemical bonds
Subject: Chemistry
Sum-up: This is a process where two or more chemicals react with each other, and then combine to become one. Chemicals that bond together, stay together.
Love lesson: Find someone who reacts to you the way that sodium looks at chlorine.
3. Dido & Aeneas
Subject: Classics
Sum-up: A classic case of love-bombing. Aeneas strides into the city of Carthage where Dido is literally the queen. They enter a heady romance before Aeneas ups and leaves to return to his mission. Dido never gets over it.
Love lesson: Don’t tell someone you love them and then ghost them – it hurts!
4. The UK-US ‘Special Relationship’
Subject: Politics & History
Sum-up: After WW2, these superpowers formed an alliance that included agreements on trade, war, law, culture and policy. And you think your romance is special?
Love lesson: From romance to friendship, it’s nice to have each other’s back in relationships.
5. Picasso’s self-portraits
Subject: Art
Sum-up: Picasso painted 30 self-portraits, from when he was 15 all the way up to when he was 90-years-old. If that isn’t self-love, we don’t know what is.
Love lesson: Don’t forget about the relationship you have with yourself. Go on, show yourself a little more appreciation (no oil paint necessary).
6. Henry VIII & his six wives
Subject: History
Sum-up: We can all agree that Henry VIII had commitment issues. So keen to divorce his first wife Catherine, that he literally had a new Anglican church invented, as it was illegal under Catholicism.
Love lesson: Put thought and care into your commitments.
7. Law of gravity
Subject: Physics
Sum-up: After sitting under that apple tree, Newton taught us that all objects attract each other with a force of gravitational attraction. And that gravity is what pulls all objects to earth.
Love lesson: Falling for someone can sometimes hit, hard.
8. King Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson
Subject: History
Sum-up: Before Queen Elizabeth II, there was her father King George. What some of us forget is that his brother Edward was king for a brief while before willingly passing on the title. He fell so deeply in love with the already-married Wallis Simpson that he abdicated the throne for her.
Love lesson: Sometimes, love is more important than leading the British Empire. Okay, this one’s not so relatable…
9. Trigonometry
Subject: Maths
Sum-up: In trigonometry, the cosine rule relates all three sides of a triangle with an angle of the same triangle. It’s a tricky one to remember but it can help you calculate missing side lengths or angles.
Love lesson: Love triangles are difficult to work out.
10. The sisters in Little Women
Subject: English
Sum-up: Louisa May Alcott may have included love and courtship in her novel but the real star of the story is the sisters’ friendship from childhood to adulthood. We see them fighting over boys and then learning to forgive each other.
Love lesson: Nothing beats sisterhood (chosen and not).
Hopefully, these love lessons will help to guide you through the rollercoaster that is relationships. And whether you’re lucky or unlucky in love, the biggest lesson to remember is to always treat people with kindness – not ruthlessness like Henry VIII.