On Love

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Quick Summary: Lol this is where I put my relationship history on the internet. I talk about the wonderfulness of light love, of whether it is better to be loved or to think of yourself as loved, and of learning to let go of a love story.

Teehee. This is so schmaltzy. And so going to bite my Future Self in the ass. A deep-breath-and-just-click-publish kinda day. I also promise that I’m not actually a psychopath, I just have a very overactive imagination.

Enjoyyyyyy! Have a lovely week everybody! If you are related to me/ a possible romantic interest/ may ever want to give me a job/ just want to retain a bit of respect - please don’t read on.

I have been in love - properly - once. I loved him awfully, which is to say both (i) a vast amount and (ii) I made a pretty horrible job of it. I remember thinking about him and family members being suspended over a pit, and marvelling about how torn I felt at who I would allow to fall. I remember thinking about how effortlessly I would give up a leg, an arm. It was a ‘take-both-kidneys-and-I’ll-mug-that-nice-Samaritan-to-get-you-a-third’ kind of First Love that I think you can probably only experience as a teenager. It took me the length of the relationship to get over him and then some, which is not a fantastic ROI.

And if I was bad at love, I was even worse at being broken up with. I had a year pinging between trying dating again, and chickening out as soon as anything seemed even the tiniest bit serious. I ignored my ex on Messenger so that I could attain a socially acceptable gap in response times, and as a result checked my Facebook obsessively. The very prospect of running into him would send me into a week-long tailspin. My Spotify Wrapped included ‘Brokenhearted’, ‘Never Forget You’ and Kid Rain’s pretty on-the-nose ‘I Hope You Never Fall in Love Again’. Eventually my friends got a glazed look in their eyes, and I could practically hear the poorly-concealed thoughts of ‘My God! People get over divorces faster than this!’

Something had to change, and in my 2023 of #FindingMyself, I also had a year (almost) entirely off men. I swore them off. Not only no relationships, but no hook ups, no romances and no crushes. Absolutely no candy floss frippery to fill my head with. It’s a resolution that I pretty much kept (bar a couple of flirty chats and a very drunken night on the top of a construction site - a story for another time).

In 2024, a new year, the old wound finally scarred over, the idea of going back to love seems much more viable. One of my intentions for this year was to fall lightly in love again (SUCH. A. HIPPY. WOW!). Emphasis on the lightly. No Big Heavy Love for me. To be frank, at the moment it doesn’t seem worth the bother, particularly when I haven’t even decided where in the world I might want to live. But the light love of easy day dreams, gentle flirtation, a whirlwind first few dates - that is where I want to be. Not heavy enough for anything to approach serious/ The Feelings, but enough to feel a bit of a connection.

So I am straight back into the delectable delights of light love, with 3-5 crushes at any given point in time. There are countless teammates, friendships, even colleagues with whom I share at least two imaginary children, an imaginary dog, and a gorgeous imaginary open plan kitchen in our house on the Cornish coast - and they don’t even know it.

And as for the non-imaginary situationships - my goodness is it fun. I’d forgotten the deliciousness of moments leading up to a first kiss, those first flirty chats where random things gain a heavy emphasis because they fall in the fertile air that says ‘This Is Just a Preamble’. Back to badly hidden hickeys, mock Valentines, and knowingly widened eyes across group conversations.

There is a lot to be said for light love.

***
A question my Italian friend Busa and I have discussed at length - is it better to presume that people are in love with you when they are not, or to be unaware when people are?

Busa falls into the latter camp. Lots of people are in love with her. She is gorgeous. She is also (because it’s stupidly reductive to say that alone) loyal, kind, funny, a top Oxford medic and an exceptional 200 metre runner. And really likeable. Eugh.

What this means is Busa is Muse Material. People have made her playlists, flown across countries for her, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one stalker board exists of her whereabouts and habits. And yet she remains oblivious. Only after the third sonnet and sixteenth bouquet of roses will she start to think that - maybe - someone might like her. Maybe.

It is not at all surprising that I fall into the other camp - the Presumers. Combine an inflated ego, a hopelessly overactive imagination, and a love of love, and you have the recipe for romances to sprout anywhere you walk. I presume myself to be loved by every door opener, smiling shop assistant, or random train companion - and I’m wise enough to never put myself in the position to receive any data that might shatter that presumption. In my head, I leave a trail of broken hearts in my wake, lying in the happy space between ‘any reasonable interpretation of the evidence’ and ‘an iron clad case to the contrary’.

In Plato’s Republic, Plato is asked by Glaucon “What is the point of justice?”. Glaucon’s argument is that it is the perception of being just, rather than being just itself that benefits the holder. Who would be the just man, if everyone thinks they are a liar - and their family are shamed, and they themselves thrown in chains? Far better, Glaucon argues, to be thought of as just. To be held in high esteem and trusted for moral decisions, to be able to subvert this perception of justice for your own personal gain. Being thought of as just is a far better deal than to be just itself.

Busa and I are grappling with a similar kind of question, although I cannot quite believe I bastardised Plato to make this point. Is it better to be loved or to think of yourself as loved? The former is probably better for the actual business of having a relationship. But the latter brings so many sprinkles of fun in a day. At 75, Busa may be surrounded by adoring grandchildren, dandling the next generation of long-limbed Italian heart-breakers on her knee. But I will be pitying the poor nurse in the retirement home who is longing to date me, if only their duty of care would allow.

***

I think this bevy of fictional relationships has come about because I love a love story. I love when things fall together into a narrative that makes it seem like these two people were destined to be together, like everything fell into place to allow them to do so. Like my grandparents. My grandparents first met at four, my grandfather pulling my grandmother’s hair in the playground. But he was evacuated over the war, and they were separated.

At 15, they met again, a house party, crossing paths. After, my grandma came home from the party and spoke to her mother.

‘I’ve met the man I’m going to marry. He’s red and blue, like me’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know. But he’s red and blue, like me.’

They lose touch again. Then they meet a third time, in front of a painting at the National Gallery. He is a teacher now, corralling a classroom, newly minted from Cambridge. She is on her third art school. This time they meet, and they do not lose touch. They married, and - even after my grandfather passed away - it’s continued to be the most beautiful love story. They lived a gorgeous bohemian life together, the perfect balance of beauty and joy and right - him featuring in a documentary as ‘Britain’s Socialist Headmaster’, her painting enormous abstract pieces and raising their five children (plus the many other waifs and strays they quietly adopted).

(Hot take coming up) For a long time, I really wanted a love story like my grandparents. I wanted the vignettes, and the characters, and the sense of a world falling into place to support it.

And - for a little while - I got it. I dated a man who, like me, had an enormous sense of narrative. Who cared and understood about what was beautiful, who would go and sleep in a tarpaulin under the stars - and together we wrote all the vignettes. We had date after date falling into one or another narrative trope. There was the Bridget-Jones-Style-Catastrophic-Picnic; the Lady-And-The-Tramp-Fancy-Restaurant-Sneak-In; the New-Girl-In-The-Big-City-Whirled-Around-London-Parks; the Attractive-Arty-Couple-Hitting-Up-The-Galleries. It was a love story, but one I think we were both aware we were writing - a conscious cultivation and capture of beauty.

And it was in that brief interlude, possessing that love story I’d wanted for so long that I realised the value of the Unremarkable. The things that aren’t said, or remembered, and can’t be written, but that surround a relationship. That form the intangible things that bind you with another person, that make up your idea of who they are. You can’t really explain why someone is funny, or makes you laugh, or capture in words all the wonderful them-ness of them. It’s just there. The uncapturability of it is why birthday cards always sound so lame, why it’s so hard to write a speech for a wedding, why every eulogy feels grossly inadequate. There’s so, so much more to people than can be spoken about, even in the most beautiful words.

I see that with my parents. They don’t have a particularly dramatic love story - it all kicked off with a pair of sweaty shin pads - but my goodness are they in love. They’re always laughing, and each holds a very high opinion of the other. In addition to finding my dad really funny, my mum is clear-sighted enough to see the rare value of him as someone who very purely, and very deliberately tries to do the right thing. In turn, my dad allows my mum to be her wonderful self, outside of any boxes, and gives space and respect to her drive, grace and resilience. (This - right here - is showing me the difficulty of the Unremarkable. It’s so much bigger, and so much cooler, and so much better than I’ve managed to put into words there. Take it on trust - they’re great, and they’re great together). My grandparents too had this kind of Unremarkable, and it was the Unremarkable that I ought to have been thinking about.

After this year of light loves, I’m hoping to go back to being open to a bigger, heavier kind of love. But I’m hoping that I do so with a much better sense of what matters and what I might want. Which is no guarantee I’ll find it. But it is also a far better place to be looking from.

*** update: of course 5/6 likes for this would be from my family. guys. honestly. one job. ***