You know how to find happiness: Just meet Prince Charming (or Cinderella), overcome all obstacles, get married. The end. Sure, we _kind of_ know real life doesn’t work like that. And yet

this “romantic” story remains right up there on its cultural pedestal. We measure ourselves against it when we “fail.” I know how that feels. I’m polyamorous — in two simultaneous loving

relationships — which is a “failure” condition because if you _really_ love someone, you aren’t supposed to want anybody else. But I’m also a philosophy professor, and I say this blinkered

focus on a single story arc is making us miserable. Can’t we dethrone the fairy tale, and celebrate a range of stories with real people in them? Wouldn’t it be more creative — not to mention

distinguishing two concepts of “happiness.” One is about nice feelings: _Hedonic_ happiness. The other is about broader well-being or flourishing — what Aristotle called _eudaimonia_. If you

are _eudaimonic_, you might be deeply satisfied with your life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you feel good all the time. Philosophers love to pull apart concepts like this, but we also

like to mash disparate concepts together and see what happens. My conceptual recipe for _love-crafting_ has three main ingredients drawn from happiness research, the world of business and

management and the philosophy of love. A strange brew, sure, but hear me out. Let’s start with happiness. It is quite well known that happiness is tied to _agency_ — that is, making one’s

own decisions. The link can be understood partly in biological terms. As neuroscientist Alex Korb explains, one study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain

activity shows that: > “(a)ctively choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in > how the participants felt about the action, and it increased > rewarding dopamine 

activity.” Dopamine feels good, but there’s more to it than just that. Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s work with suicidal prisoners in Nazi death camps led him to

conclude that having a sense of meaning or purpose in life is ultimately what makes it worth living. He stresses agency in this connection, noting that: > “Everything can be taken from a 

man but one thing: the last of the > human freedoms —to choose one’s attitude in any given set of > circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” RESHAPE THE RAW MATERIALS OK, but what does

this have to do with business and management? Here we toss _job-crafting_ into the mix. This concept was introduced by researchers Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton in 2001 to “capture the

actions employees take to shape, mold, and re-define their jobs.” Although a job description determines the “raw materials” you have to work with, job-crafters creatively reshape their work

for better alignment with their strengths and values. Wrzesniewski describes one of the original inspirations for their theory: A hospital cleaner who switched around the pictures in the

rooms of coma patients, in case something about the changing environment might encourage their healing. This wasn’t in her job description — she _chose_ to make it part of her role. This is

huge, because the connection with agency brings _eudaimonia_ into view. As Annie Dillard powerfully reminds us in _The Writing Life_, “(h)ow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our

lives.” Now for the third ingredient: _Intentional love_. This has roots in the thought of social psychologist Eric Fromm, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck and feminist cultural critic bell

hooks. In _All About Love_, hooks, for instance, says that: “(l)ove is an act of will, both an intention and an action,” and that “will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose

to love.” Although we are taught to think of love as out of control, something we “fall” into, an “addiction,” and even a form of “madness,” that is not _intentional_ love. BREAK THE RULES

Now to combine the ingredients together: 1) Exercising agency is tied to happiness — not just good feelings, but a deeper sense that one’s life has meaning. 2) Job-crafting is a powerful way

to exercise agency, even when your role has been externally prescribed. 3) Love, like work, can be practised intentionally and thoughtfully. Conclusion? Love-crafting has _got_ to be worth

a try. So what would it look like? Better to ask what it _does_ look like. Many love-crafters “break the rules” (as do some of their job-crafting counterparts). Some forge a network of

loving friendships that (gasp!) doesn’t include a focal romantic relationship. Some craft non-monogamous marriages, non-sexual romances, queer loves and all kinds of things we don’t have

labels for yet. Others craft “normal” relationships. The difference between a monogamous, hetero (etc.) relationship that’s “fallen” into and one that’s _chosen_ is all the difference in the

world. As Frankl says in _Man’s Search for Meaning_, “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” Philosophers have tried to tell us this for centuries, and now they have empirical

evidence to back them up. Once the point sinks in, it’s obvious: Chasing a “happily-ever-after” that’s externally prescribed by a one-size romantic ideal is a great way to _ruin_ our chances

of being happy-ever-at-all. Intentionally crafting love to make it meaningful to you? Now that might have a shot. This does not mean a life of wall-to-wall _The Hills Are Alive_ happiness —

hedonic feelings tend to come and go. Rather, my money is on this hypothesis: like job-crafting, love-crafting tends towards _eudaimonia_ — the deep happiness that makes everything else

possible.