Lessons in love - part two
On a 44-year marriage, friendship, community, parenthood, pets, lost love, found love, love that never was... and the joy in the attempt
Welcome to part two of a special edition of Conversations on Love, in which 20 writers share their lessons about love. You can read part one here. (Normal service will resume next month!)
DANI SHAPIRO
Five years ago, my husband was diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer. We’d enjoyed a long stretch — more than twenty years — of crisis-free living. Somehow we imagined this as a given: this beauty, this peace, this bounty. But in an instant, our luck changed. We found ourselves in a hospital in New York City, where he had surgery which ultimately saved his life. The day of his operation was also the start date of newly-minted doctors, recent graduates, who accompanied surgeons on their rounds. Picture this: a vibrant, beautiful man, now laid low, vulnerable, with a gaggle of brand-new doctors gathered around his bed, as if he were an exhibit in a museum. I watched as they filed in, day after day. One of the brand new doctors was a lovely young woman with a diamond on her finger that looked, somehow, new, as if it had been placed there just weeks before. As she leaned over my husband, day after day, I found myself wanting to say something to her, which I finally did. “When you say that whole ‘for better or for worse business?” She looked up at me. “It’s a real thing,” I went on. And I felt it — all of it — the beauty, the terror of long-term commitment. There is nothing more powerful, more vulnerable, than walking alongside another human being, knowing you’re in it together, no matter what life hands you.
Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro is out now
TOM RASMUSSEN
I used to think, or perhaps I was taught, that love was like maths — addition and subtraction, gainable and losable. Love, now, real adult love (I hope, I think!) is actually much less dramatic than that. And much less calculable. My husband and I have been polyamorous for four years now, and I’ve learned that love is forgiveness, love is growing towards each other. Love is forgiving each other when we fail at that, and attempting to grow once again. And love is the attempt as much as it is the success. How wonderful!
First Comes Love by Tom Rasmussen is out now
ANNIE LORD
When me and my ex broke up I found it hard to accept the idea that in order to move on I’d have to forget about him as well. The way the back of his head felt like the soft underside of Velcro. The way he’d go neeeeewwwwww every time a bike went past. When I went out into the world friends would say, ‘You’re looking well’, and I hated it because it meant that I was doing it, I was learning to live in a world without him in it and that’s the last thing I wanted.
But then even now I’ll have these moments where he’d come back to me so vividly, when I’ll listen to a song and think about him nodding along to it as it blasts out of a portable speaker, or I’ll put on a scruffy coat that I love but I know he’d hate, and I see that I can’t ever lose him even if now I might want to. Exes form so much of who you are, what you like, dislike, the way you see the world, the decisions you buckle down on. You helped to make each other, free each other too.
Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord is out now
CHARLOTTE FOX WEBER
Friendship is a huge part of our sense of self and self-esteem; a continual story in how we understand the world. It's part of the rich tapestry of life that you get to have a huge range of friendships. You can have friends who understand work, and friends who understand motherhood, and friends who understand your obsession with something rare or weird or random. It doesn't have to be a one size fits all thing, where everything is understood by one other person; we're multifaceted and connect in different ways with different people. But there's also always that gap of loneliness that is just part of being alive, where you feel misunderstood or unknown in some way.
What I have learnt about this particular form of love is that repeated, continual forgiveness and acceptance are important. If you start scolding friends or keeping a grudge list, you will eliminate people rapidly. Friends do have to have difficult conversations, occasionally, but constant criticism is pernicious.
I think it’s worth remembering that we're always in motion. Satisfaction is fleeting, enoughness is fleeting. We're easily dissatisfied and wanting in some way. Which means there can be joyous moments of connection and contentment in a friendship, but they can’t last forever. So I think if we can lean into some of the restlessness of wanting to understand and seeking to be understood, then we can be more comfortable with friendships as they inevitably change, and more free to enjoy their beauty.
What We Want by Charlotte Fox Weber is out now
PIP RICH
"We don't have to keep him," my husband said, opening the boot of our car to reveal a 6 month old rescue puppy he'd read about online and just been 'to have a look at.' "Why not?" I asked, as he shivered in the warm August air, clamped to the base of our Mini. I had just - finally - fallen in love with the puppy we'd already got 9 months earlier and my heart was so crammed it only had room for more dogs. Puppy love - for me - wasn't instant. And then one day, he stole my slipper - again - and I realised he’d taken my heart, too. It was a love so vast, so infinite that it overflowed into every corner, smoothing my most frayed edges. There were no words - on his part, of course - to express it, and no words that felt big enough on mine. Instead a stream of nonsense babbled, that he was a good boy, a kind man, a little baby, a silly munchkin, a wonderful and most precious angel that needed to be told so every moment of every day. The second dog, instantly also a good boy, a kind man, a little baby, a silly munchkin, a wonderful and most precious angel that needed to be told so every moment of every day, had ocean eyes and was a pool of love. His gratitude flowed in every wag, it rippled in every paw tap on my arm telling me to stroke him again. I didn’t know that love could be truly unconditional, that it could take you over so completely. That pure love could become your personality as it is theirs, and could be the best personality you’ve ever known. That it could be your own, if you let it in. My husband and I, we’re all they have. Those two dogs, they’re all we need.
JULIA SAMUEL
From my own experience, and from my work with clients — a love relationship that you invest in for the long term — the person you make your family— if it is based on the passion of “falling in love” is risky. A relationship based on similar values, hopes for the future, kindness, supporting each other through the tough times is likely to be more secure. Similarly love built on small kindnesses every day, a turning toward rather than away is more likely to succeed than grand gestures.
A further thought from my 44 year marriage: we have had 5 different marriages in those decades; we’ve allowed change individually and collectively. It is not easy, but it has been worth the work.
Follow Julia Samuel on Instagram
Every Family Has A Story by Julia Samuel is out now
CARO GILES
As smoke curled away from the embers of my marriage, I started to understand what love is not. Love is not love just because someone tells you it is. Wedding vows that you say in front of hundreds of people are not necessarily love, even though you mean them at the time, and even though extricating yourself from those vows feels like it might break you. As the indentation from my wedding ring faded from my finger, I finally understood that for love to be truly meaningful and authentic, it is crucial to prioritise the love affair we have with ourselves, not bend ourselves to fit another narrative.
In Twelve Moons I wrote about becoming lost inside my marriage and the reclamation that followed, but my story continues. Being a single parent-carer to many daughters forces me to remember to love myself, because if I go down, who else is there? I tell my children again and again that true love - romantic or otherwise - doesn’t mean only displaying your best side. Surround yourself with people who keep showing up when you are messy, I whisper to my daughters. True love is being exactly who you need to be and never being told you are too much. I whisper it over and over, trace this soft mantra onto our hearts.
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Twelve Moons, a memoir by Caro Giles, is out now
JACQUELINE CROOKS
As a member of the Windrush community, my personal journey from Jamaica to London sixty years ago has given me the time to reflect on this community and our impact on British society. In my book, "Fire Rush," I delve into the complexities of our cultural identity and the indomitable spirit that defines us.
In the wake of the Windrush Scandal and the pandemic, I've been reflecting on the love that radiates within the Windrush community. It's a love that goes beyond blood relations and the Caribbean community itself. It transcends boundaries of class, backgrounds, and race.
One aspect that stands out is the unwavering commitment of our community members to the care sector. Many, including my own extended family, have dedicated themselves to caring for older people and other vulnerable individuals. Caring in that joyful, spirited Caribbean style can only be described as community love.
I've therefore learned from the Windrush Community that there is such a thing as community love, a body of love that comes from a community and goes outward to people in need.
The Windrush Community's ability to navigate adversity with grace and maintain a strong sense of cultural pride speaks of love. As we continue to honour our heritage and advocate for justice and recognition, I hope that we stay focused on community love and how it unites us.
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks is out now
SALMA EL-WARDANY
Over the last two years I have reassessed every relationship I have. Not because I wanted to, but because everything changed. Maybe it's just mid-thirties, maybe it's the inevitable loss of friends to marriage and motherhood, or maybe it's a post-pandemic world, but my relationships with the people that I deeply loved didn't feel as good anymore. Something was off-kilter. I longed for who we used to be.
One day, while on the phone to a dear friend, I said the sentence, 'well, I'm above reproach in this, but he's being an idiot.' My friend, who has always been good at laughing at me, did just that. She then, kindly, pointed out how silly I was being and that in a relationship between two people, no one is above reproach.
She's right, of course. When I am being searingly honest about my failings and shortcomings, when I take my ego out of the equation, and when I can come to my relationships open-hearted and open to feedback, my relationships flourish. They become soft places.
I have learned that the best thing I can do for my relationships is to ruthlessly work on myself. Constantly try to improve the person I am. Become a softer place.
Lately, the world has been granite-like and the pandemic made us all harder places. Broke us open a little bit. Took some of the light out of us. If we want to fall in love, or stay in love, we have to take responsibility for the limescale that builds up around us. Or has been there from previous heartbreaks. You see, everything that breaks grows back harder. Less flexible. There's no give. The bend, the lean, the 'I'll do anything for you,' has gone. Which makes our relationships so much harder. More brittle.
I have learned that with constant self-development I can grow back a little softer. Be a better place for those I love. Have more fulfilling and less fraught relationships. And it's not easy. Being ruthlessly honest with yourself is hard and humbling. It's easier to break something, to walk away, than to stay and ask yourself the question, 'What am I doing that is contributing to the demise of this relationship?' Obviously, there's a line, and if someone is walking all over you, or being intentionally hurtful, you never stay. But this year I have learned that the real work of relationships is the work I do on myself.
Subscribe to Salma’s substack Sunday Cervix:
These Impossible Things by Salma El-Wardany is out now
CASSIE WERBER
There was a man I once met who loved another man. He came to London after they broke up, and he joined a friend and I for drinks. There was a quality to the evening that I couldn’t understand, because I thought: this can’t be mutual attraction; I must be wrong.
I went to wait at the bar and he joined me. His smile had something perfect about it. He was wearing a sweater that was half yellow and half grey, but very beautifully knitted, so the line between the colours was soft and almost invisible. I opened my mouth to speak, and the words that came out were a compliment about the sweater. But what I really meant was: “I have fallen in love with you.” I knew it then, and I knew it in all the moments afterwards.
He invited me to a party the next night. I was incredibly excited to go. I wore black shoes with very high thin heels, which is not my usual style, and quite clearly pissed off the host, a woman I didn’t know who I think was hoping something else would happen. I danced with the man, and then we kissed on the stairs. I spent the whole weekend in a state of total surprise that this thing was happening.
He went back to the country where he lived, to the man he had loved, and maybe still did, but now just worked with. We emailed. I visited, twice, both very short trips. It was too much, too soon, what I felt for him. You can’t just fall in love with someone because they stand beside you at a bar, because their smile is a perfect thing in the world. Or: you can; but you can’t insist they feel the same, or make them feel it, however good your emails, however blazing the hope. It didn’t last. Perhaps because I held too tight and couldn’t help it; perhaps because it wasn’t meant to be.
I bought a sweater with a soft line between the yellow and the grey. It isn’t the same as his, but I still wear it.
Open Season by Cassie Werber is published on 25th April
AMY ABRAHAMS
My four-year-old son has entered a phase of nocturnal philosophising. Just when you think he’s almost asleep, he throws out a difficult question.
‘Why doesn’t the Earth fall down from the sky?’
‘Do people feel sad when they die?’
The other night he sat up and said: ‘Why did you want to be a mummy?’
I had never been asked this before. In fact, I’d never even asked myself that question. The truth is, I probably considered my last winter-coat purchase more deeply than I did the question of motherhood. That’s not to say I was ambivalent about it. Or flippant. Or ungrateful. I just didn’t overthink the ‘wanting’ part. I simply knew it. A primal longing that grew deeper and wilder and more unsteadying after I had a complicated miscarriage.
The real problem was that I never considered what came after the baby. Consequently, I was ambushed by so much of motherhood. The practicalities of parenthood, the sleep deprivation, the identity crises, the impact on my career and my marriage. And let’s not forget the anxiety, the endless anxiety. How so much of motherhood for me is a tessellation of love and worry, which I am still learning to prise apart.
‘That’s a good question,’ I said to my son. ‘I suppose it’s because I wanted to love a child. And care for them. And make a family. I suppose it’s because I knew I had the love to give.’
As I sat by his bed, gently massaging his back, I thought, if love is my ‘why’, then everything else is just texture.
I did not want to be a mother so I could impress people with how skilfully I made birthday cakes. Or how quickly I could snap back into a pre-baby body. Or how tidy I kept my home.
I looked at him and thought, if love is my ‘why’, then I must hold firm to that when he is defiant or screaming or beating little fists on my thigh. I must love him through those moments even more.
I thought, isn’t it interesting how love layers – it does not subtract. If we understand that we can share love, we can use it to build the world around us.
I thought, when the wider world feels painful and messy and bleak, I must show my children that I have hope in love too. That I believe it can change things.
I wanted to say so much to him. But it was late. And we were both tired. So I said, ‘I love you more than anything. Thank you for making me a mummy. Now sleep.’
As I circled my fingertips over his delicious soft cheek, his breathing grew heavier and I felt a warmth in me that seemed to radiate from a cellular level. Then his tiny hand reached out from under his duvet towards mine and he stroked my fingers while staring into my eyes with such intensity that I thought, this is why I wanted to be a mother. This. This perfect moment.
Then he said, ‘You need to put moisturiser on your knuckles.’ And he closed his eyes.
Amy is a writer and journalist, and the creator of the Substack newsletter Tiny Chaos. Subscribe here:
NELL STEVENS
For a long time, I thought that love was something you had to work at. It’s the kind of advice you hear from long-married couples: Love takes work; you have to work hard in a healthy relationship. Love felt like an important task, like all the other things you had to do as a young person in the process of becoming yourself: you had to get a job, a place to live, a person to love.
I worked really, really hard at love for a long time. As a teenager, I wrote a note to myself, which I carried around in my pocket as a reminder; it said: Notice Boys! At university, I spent a lot of time watching my first ever boyfriend play World of Warcraft; I worked hard at feigning interest, and at not being pissed off when he went on days-long benders and forgot to text. Later, I worked hard at being in love with other men: the one who was in quite a bad band, whose gigs I attended devotedly; the one who got annoyed at people who cried (so I had to work hard never to cry, not even at sad films); the one who was going to be a really famous writer, if he could just find the time to finish his novel.
Later, I met a woman and fell in love with her and married her and had two children with her and realised that love was not supposed to take as much work as I’d thought - that some things are for working at and others for accepting, succumbing to, welcoming. I found that love was like that for me: a gift to receive, and a joy, and also a rest, a lifelong holiday.
Briefly, A Delicious Life, by Nell Stevens, is out now
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Thank you so much for reading!
Wishing you big and little love stories this week, in many different places.
Natasha xxx
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If you enjoy this newsletter, you might also enjoy my book Conversations on Love, which is out now in paperback
Dani Shapiro nailed it for me. My husband meant it when he said "in sickness and in health..." I am a 9-year survivor of multiple myeloma and kidney failure. I have also been the once-vibrant person surrounded by newly minted doctors.