Relationship satisfaction is the key to individual happiness, SESP Prof. Alexandra Solomon told a crowd of graduating seniors at The Cubby Bear, a Chicago sports bar, Wednesday night.

Solomon, known for teaching the popular class “Marriage 101: Building Loving and Lasting Relationships,” was selected by the senior class to give the Last Lecture, a Senior Week tradition in which a professor gives graduating seniors advice about life after college.

Solomon’s lecture, entitled “Brave Love,” focused on improving the quality of intimate relationships, which she said is more positively correlated with personal satisfaction than any other factor.

“The idea of brave love is that the quality of your intimate relationships does not rest on finding Mr. or Mrs. Right, it’s about being Mr. or Mrs. Right,” Solomon said.

Her lecture centered around seven aspects of healthy relationships: dating with integrity, taking charge of personal happiness, being self-aware and taking ownership of your feelings, valuing sex as sacred, fighting fair, honoring your passions and those of your partner, and focusing on “being” rather than just “doing.”

“There’s a mentality of ‘I’ll be happy once — I’ll be happy once I graduate, I’ll be happy once I lose 10 pounds’… this leads to anxiety,” Solomon said about taking charge of your own happiness. “You can’t argue with reality — reality is right here, right now.”

When speaking on dating with integrity, Solomon brought up dating apps and services like Tinder and OkCupid, asking students to use them carefully, both in terms of personal safety and respect.

“View your online dating apps as a means to get from here to there — it’s not a shopping service, it’s not a game … it’s a real live human being on the other end,” she said.

Solomon was nominated and voted on via email by seniors in a process that was controversial this year due to discrepancies in the tone of the professors’ biographies provided on the ballot, which caused African American Studies Prof. Barnor Hesse to withdraw over the “demeaning and insulting” nature of his biography that he said succumbed to “racist tropes.”

Solomon responded to the controversy in a letter to the editor after her selection to give the lecture. In her response, she touched on some of the themes she later explored in the Last Lecture, including integrity and taking ownership.

“Especially in situations that feel painful and confusing, even though it may be tempting to go silent, become defensive, ignore or blame, willingness to name, examine, apologize and forgive creates the conditions for internal change, relational change and systemic change,” Solomon said in her letter.

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