Conversations on Love

‘Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.’

When I asked psychiatrist Dr Megan Poe why people lose their sense of self in relationships, she said it’s sometimes because they’re trying to ‘echo-locate the other and not reveal the self’ and merge with them.

realize that our private shame is universal, that
our worst heartbreaks have been felt and survived before

It’s a daily project. Some days I feel I’ve got nothing, some days I wake up and feel I’ve got everything. Some days I can let go of the losses, some days I feel they’re crowding in on me,

It’s about friends understanding I can be anxious and depressed, but also wild and shy and silly and fearful. When friends see all those parts of me, and guide me through them, gently and with time? That is real intimacy.

You’re pretending you don’t need relationship labels or consistent communication or the small acts of kindness that make you feel loved. You’re pretending you don’t need anything at all.

tories. It seems that we cannot know enough about this riddle of our lives. We go back and back to the same scenes, the same words, trying to scrape out the meaning. Nothing could be more familiar than love. Nothing else eludes us so completely.’

(Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook)

OceanofPDF.com

love is not a narrow thing. That love is what makes us care, connects us to each other and the world. That love is a quest, a promise, a home. It’s the force we create to reach each other, with cups of tea and tenderness, with humour and ‘I’m sorry’s; and it’s a world we create with another person, one truth at a time.

The challenges have shifted in friendships as well: more of my friends are miscarrying, and I have to find ways to sensitively show up for them, while allowing space for any complex feelings they might have now that I’m a mother. Love will always flow through our lives in this inconsistent, unknowable way, and we cannot press pause on the joyful bits, nor fast-forward the suffering. All we can do is keep noticing when there is an imbalance, keep adjusting our efforts to make sure the people we love know that they are important to us.

In my twenties, friendship was effortless and romantic relationships required work. In my early thirties, marriage felt easy but I had to put more effort into friendship.