Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir

by Dolly Alderton

A friend having a boyfriend is only ever fun if you have a boyfriend too.

Lowkey real tho

It’s a good idea to get married a bit later in life and after you’ve lived a bit. Say, twenty-seven.

Do i have a teenage mindset because this is still my goal LOL

She is without ego; I think my piece of morning toast is important enough to warrant broadcast on social media (three channels).

So me

One Sunday night I will be lying on his bed in his sweater and he will get out a book to read before we sleep about a man who discovered a fish. I will grab it off him and look at the inside cover to see a photograph of a man with the same face and surname as Graysen. The boyfriend will ask why I am laughing. “Because it was all real,” I will say. “And it was so ridiculous.”

Thats crazyyyyy

She’s taking one for the team, being my wing woman—going to the party for the greater good of my vagina.

“This is awkward,” he says as I sit on a plastic chair and he hops from foot to foot. “Why? Just say it.” “I really fancy your mate Farly,” he says. “Is she single?” In a nanosecond, I weigh up how much of a good person I am. “No,” I reply, deciding I’ve got plenty of time left in life for personal growth. “No, she’s not single.” “Fuck,” he says. “Is she in a relationship?” “Yes, a very serious one,” I say gravely, nodding. “With a boy called Dave.”

Omfgggg

“Do you love me anymore?” I asked. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think I do love you anymore.” “Do you at least fancy me?” I asked. There was a silence. “I don’t think so.” I hung up.

“Harry, why have you done this?” she barked. I couldn’t make out what he was saying on the other end of the line. “Fine, but why do it to her over the phone? Why couldn’t you have come see her and do it in the flesh?” she barked again. There was more indecipherable talking on his side. Farly listened. “YEAH? WELL YOU CAN GO FUCK YOURSELF,” she shouted, hanging up and throwing the mobile onto the seat behind her.

True friend

I didn’t fall in love; love fell on me. Like a ton of bricks from a great height.

If you ignore the boyfriends of your best friends for long enough, they’ll eventually go away. Treat them a bit like how you would the common cold or a mild case of thrush.

LMFAO

When you can’t fall asleep, dream of all the love affairs with olive-skinned, curly haired men that lie ahead of you.

didn’t even know he had housemates until I drunkenly stumbled into the kitchen one morning at six a.m., entirely naked, to be confronted by a man called Scott.

Omfg

constantly behaving in a way that makes you feel shameful means you simply will not be able to take yourself seriously and your self-esteem will plummet

We hadn’t chosen each other. But we were family.

you begin to wonder if life is really just waiting for buses on Tottenham Court Road and ordering books you’ll never read off Amazon; in short, you are having an existential crisis.

And it wasn’t what you thought it might be. You are not who you thought you’d be.

The answer was, of course, what the answer always is for a single twenty-something woman prone to a touch of melodrama: move to a different city.

“If you feel like you can show all of yourself to someone without fear of being judged,” he said, “your intimacy will go through the roof.”

sometimes a breakup can be nothing but a relief for both parties; like an air-conditioning unit has finally been turned off, the low, relentless hum of which you hadn’t realized was there until everything is silent.

I was nothing more than an impulse buy for his ego. I was a leather jacket or a fast car that he liked the idea of, but knew after purchasing that it would never work for him or fit into his life.

Harry got engaged—I felt no anger at all. Adam moved in with a girl—I sent him a text to congratulate him. Their stories had nothing to do with me anymore, I didn’t need their attention. I felt like I was finally jogging along on my own path, gathering my own pace and momentum.

Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I’m bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers.

We all know we’re going to die, and yet we still live.

therapy can only get you so far. It’s like the theory test when you’re learning to drive. You can work out as much as you like on paper, but at some point you’re going to have to get in the car and really fucking feel how it all works.

If you feel exhausted by people, it’s because you’re willingly playing the martyr to make them like you. It’s your problem, not theirs.

Things will change more radically than you could ever imagine. Things will end up 300 miles north of your wildest predictions. Healthy people drop dead in supermarket queues.

Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendships with women.

love is a pretty quiet thing. It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee.

know that love happens under the splendor of moon and stars and fireworks and sunsets but it also happens when you’re lying on blow-up air beds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in the emergency room or in the queue for a passport or in a traffic jam. Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.

Any decent man would take a woman at peace with herself over a woman who performs tricks to impress him.

More often than not, the love someone gives you will be a reflection of the love you give yourself. If you can’t treat yourself with kindness, care, and patience, chances are someone else won’t either.

However thin or fat you are is no indicator of the love you deserve or will receive.

Breakups get harder with every year you get older. When you’re young, you lose a boyfriend. As you get ol...

No practical matter is important enough to keep you in the wrong relationship. Holidays can be canceled, weddings can ...

is no person’s job to be the sole provider of your happiness. Sorry.

Let your friends abandon you for a relationship once. The good ones will always come back.

To lower your heart rate and drift off on nights when sleep feels impossible, dream of all the adventures that lie ahead of you and the distances you’ve traveled so far. Wrap your arms tightly round your body and, as you hold yourself, hold this one thought in your head: I’ve got you.

didn’t want to be weird about turning thirty. Being weird about turning thirty is a cliché.

The older you get, the more baggage you carry, the more honest, open, and vulnerable everyone allows themselves to be.

the most important thing in a relationship is how well you work as a team.

endlessly wary of someone who is intent on looking after you all the time. Be endlessly wary of someone who needs looking after all the time.

When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you’re happy, and sing All Saints with you when you’re drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you forever. Keep it as close to you as you can.