Conversations on Love

by Natasha Lunn

For anyone who feels lost in longing

At this point, all but one of my closest friends were in relationships. Those who were too busy to meet up on Sundays often lamented their lack of time. They longed for more hours in the day. They had toddlers’ party bags to fill, in-laws to entertain, Sunday roasts to assemble. They had less time, so they appreciated it more; I had too much of it to fill, so appreciated it less. I knew time was a precious thing to be used more productively: I was alive, I could do anything, write, volunteer, start yoga, go to a gallery, a pottery class, somewhere I might make new friends. I resented time for underlining my loneliness, and I resented myself for wasting it.

I would tell friends, ‘I don’t mind if I don’t meet anyone for another ten years, I just want to know that it will happen one day.’

Swiping my life away.

Today, if someone asks, ‘Who is the love of your life?’ I immediately think of friends, because friendship is the form of love I have allowed into my life.

So far, my friends have treated me with more kindness than a romantic partner has. And it’s so important to spend your life with people who not only see the goodness in you, but bring it out too.

as much as love involves consciousness, part of it requires us to close our eyes and jump without a plan. And the fact that we took that leap, without knowing that everything would work out? Perhaps that act of faith, of hope, might carry us through tougher times, when we look back and marvel at it, and think, how little we knew, how easily we could have found a reason not to jump.

The psychiatrist Gordon Livingston said that ‘the fundamental requirement for any satisfying relationship is a reciprocal ability to see the world as others see it, to be able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.’ And

I didn’t know that was how love worked. I thought it was a book you read and finished, and once you got through it you knew the story. But you never know the story. There’s always a new chapter.

Happiness is not a pursuit these days, it’s a mandate. You have to be happy. And you are entitled, in the name of your happiness, to do all kinds of things. So people are constantly asking, ‘Is my marriage good enough? Could it be better? Maybe I don’t have to deal with this, I’ll find myself someone else.’ The consumer mentality of ‘I can do better’ … You know ‘good enough’ is not in vogue any more, it’s all about the best.

Men’s attitude to dating in 2023.

Love is not a state of enthusiasm. It’s a verb. It implies action, demonstration, ritual, practices, communication, expression. It’s the ability to take responsibility of one’s own behaviour. Responsibility is freedom.

There are so many different types of love. There’s love for friendship, love for children, love across the generations, romantic love, love of work, love of cooking.

Susie made me realize that my envy was not only rooted in wanting what others had. Really it grew from a fear of being left behind, and of loneliness.

I think the key is that, when women start having children, it’s sometimes very painful and stressful and claustrophobic and boring and lonely. And what is also a fundamental truth is that it is incredibly painful, stressful, claustrophobic, boring and lonely to not have a family when you want one. Neither experience is more painful or more difficult than the other. Once we free ourselves from asking who we feel most sorry for, or who has made the best choice, and just allow those pains to coexist? I think that is the key to intimacy in your friendships.

‘From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales … Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life.’

That’s an important difference: that you don’t need to understand the experience as long as you understand each other through it. I’ve felt that way too. When everything falls apart in my life, no matter the experience, there’s a feeling of being loved by my brother that I’m always sure of which makes me stronger.

Shout out to Tom and Holley 🩷

After all, the people we love are a constellation. In loving them, it is our privilege to see and bring out all the different worlds and colours and depths within them, just as they have the potential to do the same for us in return.

One of the worst parts of heartbreak, I think, is waking up each morning and remembering.

‘All Too Well’ music video - “Love is so short, forgetting is so long”.

That’s why we should honour the heartbreaks that matter deeply to us, however insignificant we fear they might seem to anyone else.

‘There’s somebody else out there for you. You’re not going to meet him yet and he’s not ready to meet you, but I hope your paths cross because, if and when they do, he’s the man for you.’

Again, swiping my life away.

Without love we are nothing; an isolated person, a lump of cells. Love gives everything meaning but is too easily thrown away.

I didn’t even know he had had another sister until I was in my twenties, when he first told me, remembering how his mother had cried every day, for around two years.

It feels strange to see her name in black ink on the order of service, this little girl so rarely mentioned but who existed once.

There will always be times when resilience or love is harder to find because you are drained and scared.

My approach to dating was: if you’re going to crumble at the first sign of gunfire, keep walking.

We cannot line up our losses alongside each other and expect someone to confirm whose is worst. I know I have felt utterly broken after the end of a three-month relationship, and only mildly sad after a two-and-a-half-year one finished.

I think watching a parent experience grief can be scary, because it’s the moment you realize they are human and fragile.

I am still a walking ball of fear and I try not to lose people at every turn.

Sometimes, I realized, we lose more from fear itself than the thing we are afraid of.

There can be no way of knowing if the relationship will survive, if the adoption will go through, if a parent will live a long life, or if the next person we give our heart to will treat it with care. We cannot sift the suffering out of a life. Instead, we have to let both things in – the joy and the sorrow. I understand this is not only a necessary burden; it is what makes love more tender.

And that whatever we’ve lost, whatever life has taken from us, there will still be small moments in which we can choose to hope anyway.

I’d learnt about love’s enemies (self-pity, neglect, ego, laziness, always wanting more) and its companions (responsibility, discipline, listening, humour, forgiveness, gratitude and hope).