Warren Wilson College: Love
Ryleigh Johnson | February 11, 2025
Photo by Kai Goldstein.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, the Echo spoke to the campus community about their thoughts on love - platonic, familial, romantic and more!
Thi Hyunh, Freshman
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: I want to talk about mother-daughter love. My mom's name is Christy, and she is one of my biggest role models and closest friends. She’s one of the most thoughtful, patient and compassionate people I've ever met.
Q: How does that love impact your life?
A: My mom is my go-to person. I call her for any advice I need, or when I want to tell a story to someone. I trust her and she understands me, and has such an open heart and ear to listen. She’s really helped me with loving myself…As a kid, I totally was like, I'm so emotional, this is a bad thing about myself. My mom very quietly showed me it's actually a superpower that makes us such good listeners and people who feel connected to others.
Q: What’s your best advice on familial love?
A: I think I just try and show love in the ways I know how to…just recognizing and appreciating my mom’s love because I’m not with her every day.
Maya King, Senior
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: I just feel like queer love is so expansive and beautiful to me…Because I’m queer, the love that I've experienced is queer. I have two best friends, one of them I've known since I was six, and the other one I've known since I was nine. I think that we have really shaped each other, the three of us. That love is so expansive and so deep. It feels like every type of love I've ever experienced in one, romantic and platonic and familial.
Q: How does that love impact your life?
A: I think about them every single day. I interact with people differently because of them. The way that I go about my relationships with anyone is inherently influenced by them because they are just totally sewn into the fabric of my existence and my being. That love lives inside of me always and so even if it's not directly on my mind, it's still in me, and always present.
Q: What is your best advice on love?
A: Communicate. Talk to each other, be real with each other. Even though authenticity is so terrifying, getting to be known that way is so special, and getting to know someone else that way is so special. The more real you are about who you are, the more that you'll find people who love you for who you are. Be honest about how much you love each other. I feel like we're always telling each other how much we love each other and it is special.
Gabriel Smith, Freshman
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: When it's Valentine's Day, my mind and my heart really do come to my partner, who I love so much in so many ways.
Q: How did you and your partner meet?
A: We met at someone's high school party. It was kind of a funny way to meet. It was the end of my freshman year. I was gonna be a sophomore, and they [Smith’s partner] were gonna be a junior.
Q: What is your favorite thing about your partner?
A: Their creativity and compassion and also their passion for different organizations that they’re involved in, organizations involving trans sex ed is one of their top passions. They've worked in different nonprofits in the Asheville area and I think their passion and altruism is really inspiring. But also, I really enjoy their sense of humor and the way that we can spend time together.
Q: What is your best advice on love?
A: Love is a conversation. It's one that changes and involves. It's a two-way street. You have to compromise and come to a place where you're compassionate and really thinking ahead about the way something else will be impactful on the other person…For me, it's been a practice of intentionality and sort of cultivating a realm of committing time and energy into a balanced practice…Love is worth it.
Ellery Rather, Freshman
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: I really love my college friends. I’ve made better friends than I thought I would here. I value those friendships, and I hope to carry them into the future.
Q: How does that love impact your life?
A: I spent the hurricane break with one of my friends and now she knows my family, and we’ve been on adventures together. I also have this friend who literally tucks me into bed at night…My friends bring me little gifts, which is cute and makes me feel special and cared for. We take care of each other, which I think is awesome.
Q: What’s your best advice on platonic love?
A: You gotta make time for each other and spend time together intentionally. That also goes for romantic relationships!
Jasper Hahamovitch, Junior
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: I used to think that I was aromantic because I didn't know what romantic attraction felt like…I had never experienced romantic attraction, and I thought that I was just aromantic for a really long time. Then I met my current boyfriend, and I didn't know what I was experiencing…Over summer break, when I had barely seen them, we were talking a lot more, and I started sleeping with someone else because we were open. I realized that I didn't feel the same way about that person as I did with Miguel. It was just a really silly experience. Two of my best friends that aren't my boyfriend are Ben and Nathan. I had crushes on them when I first met them both times…They're both cis, straight men, so that didn't work, but I just got really close to them. I love those bastards.
Q: How does that love, for your friends and for your boyfriend, impact your life?
A: It makes me really happy whenever I think about them. I am an extremely affectionate person, so I'll say I love you, like 300 times a day. I got that from my parents. I think my influence and my saying that I love people all of the time, and hugging them and kissing them on the shoulder…has really changed my friend group for the better. I really like that I can have that positive influence.
Q: What is your favorite thing about your boyfriend?
A: They're adorable, but they're really, really silly…We're both very silly. We're both old men while being in our 20s…I really like people who I can have a lot of fun with, and also, we know how to have serious conversations.
Q: What is your best advice on love?
A: I feel like you need to figure out how to communicate in a way that works for you. If you don't want to understand, if you want to believe the thing that you believe in a situation and you don't want to hear what somebody else has to say…it's not gonna get anywhere…Also checking in with yourself and being able to figure out what is bothering you, even if in your conscious mind, you know it's something stupid. Brains are still bags of meat. They still get bothered by things that we feel like we shouldn't be bothered by. You have to be aware of that, otherwise you're going to end up hating somebody for a dumb reason.
April Bandy-Taylor, professor
Q: What kind of love do you want to tell The Echo about?
A: I think that's a hard question to answer because love looks different in different phases of life. My three greatest loves are my wife and my two little fur babies, but even those relationships have shifted and evolved.
Q: How did you and your wife meet?
A: We met long ago, way back in the day before you could swipe left or right before you could just share pictures of yourself…We developed this relationship over the phone, over email. I think the reason it still works today is because we did get to know each other so well, and there were no other distractions. If we wanted to talk, we were on the phone ‘till two in the morning, and so we were listening to each other…It was very traditional U-haul lesbian: we met, we had our first date and 22 years later, we still live in the same house.
Q: What is your favorite thing about your wife?
A: She makes me laugh. We're very, very different…No matter our differences, I feel like we complement each other…Through everything, I know that I can always count on her to make me laugh.
Q: What is your best advice on love?
A: Love yourself first. If you can't show up for yourself, if you can't believe in who you are as a person, then no one else will either. Part of love is about giving of yourself, and if you haven't worked on yourself enough, there's nothing left to give. I think relationships don't work if you aren't in a good place. It's so much give and take, it's so much compromise and sacrifice, but also advocating for yourself. If you haven't figured that out, then it's not the time for you…Make sure you know yourself, you love yourself, you're confident in who you are. I think other people will see that. I know other people see that.