A book review by Maddie Kreslins

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Emotional Virtue by Sarah Swafford

 

I didn’t know about Sarah Swafford’s book until my senior year of college, and reading through it now, my heart hurts for my old self. I learned the hard way about emotional virtue and I only wish that someone had told me all of this beforehand. We spend so much time telling guys and girls what not to do when it comes to dating/friendship. Why isn’t anyone talking about what they are supposed to do? Sarah Swafford has thankfully laid it out for us in her book, “Emotional Virtue: A Guide to Drama-Free Relationships.” She touches on every single stage of relationships, and gives extremely practical ways to apply virtue to all relationships, at each stage. This book is not simply a guide for how to avoid bad relationships… it is a roadmap that lays the groundwork for a life-time of knowing how to have virtuous relationships and for becoming the people that we were created to be.

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So many teens in high school and beyond are not even aware of the concept of using another person vs. loving another person. Since our society is equally confused on gender roles and appropriate ways of interacting with the other gender (as friends and as more-than-friends), our young people are left to blindly fall into the many pitfalls and traps of the modern dating scene. Flirting, texting, social media stalking, all of these things do so much more harm than we realize. Hearts get attached and then broken, expectations get shattered, and deeper insecurities are left unhealed.

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The real question is: do we as leaders even know how to help our young people navigate these situations? Do we know what to tell them? Can we ourselves explain what a virtuous friendship should look like between a guy and a girl, or explain to a teen the do’s of dating? In her book, Sarah Swafford explains perfectly the emotional “science of relationships,” and how we can avoid hurting ourselves and others, specifically through the practice of virtue. The book is split into three sections. First, she talks about “The Attack: Where Is All This Coming From?” Sarah uses this section to open the reader’s eyes to the pressure the world puts on us to be perfect and to have perfect relationships. This stressful “ideal” is so inward-focused that we are left with huge insecurities and the temptation to use others for our own benefit. The second part of her book addresses “The Answer: Where Do We Go from Here?” In this section, Sarah guides us through breaking that cycle of use, through practical and effective challenges. The third section is “The Avenue: A Roadmap with the End in Mind.” In this last part of the book, Sarah builds on everything and teaches us how to use this new awareness to navigate relationships, figuring out how to move from “Hey” to “I Do.”

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If we truly care about our teens and the well-being of their hearts, we have to help them understand this topic. I believe that right now especially, our world needs a heavy dose of emotional virtue. We need to be talking to our teens about this, otherwise they are going to be thrown into an ever-increasing drama-fest in college and beyond, with zero preparation. Relationships can be ridiculously complicated these days. If we do not help our teens by equipping them, they will both be hurt and they will hurt others. If we want to help our teens understand and live emotional virtue, I believe that Sarah Swafford’s book is the best tool out there to do so.