Conversations on Love: Lovers, Strangers, Parents, Friends, Endings, Beginnings

by Natasha Lunn

I wanted my mum to keep on talking, to always be there on the other end of the phone, updating me

Do we notice these subtle opportunities for love which are woven through our daily lives? I think more often we miss them, as I nearly did.

Even when we learn a lesson, it’s likely we forget it and have to learn it again. Even when we recognize a mistake, we make the same one a few more times before fully ditching the pattern. This is certainly the way I learnt – and am still learning – that a meaningful life is built on many different forms of love.

You take all the efforts you’ve been pouring into longing, and instead use them to dig deeper for the love that’s already there, hiding right in front of you, so that you can grow

it means being brave enough to hope for what you want, but wise enough to know that life is not one love story, but many. It means trying to build love with a partner – if you want one – but also in purposeful solitude, in creating something that others connect to, in a stranger’s kind words, in friendship, in family, and in the sometimes-bright-sometimes-grey sky that’s always been there, all your life. It means understanding, too, that all these forms of love are not given or acquired; they are learnt and earned.

The tenderness of love does not wane over time – it deepens. The fleeting parts are tiny pockets of time like these, which we must do our best to pay attention to.

And I knew it then, so clearly: that, although at times that year I had felt alone, I never really had been.

How do we carry on loving our friends, siblings, children and partners – and ourselves – as best we can, even when other areas of life (work, health, money) demand more attention?

It introduced me to the beauty of knowing the whole version of someone, rather than your fantasy of who they are. And the quiet sturdiness of real love, which, like anything meaningful in life, requires effort.

New love is always exciting, but what happens after the newness of a relationship fades or dims is more beautiful to me. It’s something that grows, where there is patience and humour, where you can be furious with someone and still love them.

It has certainly shown me that you can have a spark and excitement and romance with someone who’s also going to be there in the morning when you haven’t brushed your teeth.

Feeling cared for at all times, being truly seen, being accepted for who I am – the good and the bad – and being held to a high standard. I love that my partner has expectations of me, and I always try to rise to that occasion. It’s also about believing your partner when they articulate where they’re at emotionally, instead of trying to talk them out of their feelings. You have to accept their feelings as they are, even when they see things differently to you. For me, the most beautiful thing about long-term love is understanding that a person has become necessary to your life. My life doesn’t make sense without my partner in it and I feel as necessary to her life as she is to mine. And also – it sounds obvious but it’s important – we make each other laugh every day. Enjoying each other’s company is a big part of love. I use my parents as a model: they’ve been married for forty-seven years and they still laugh, they still go on dates. Even when they bicker, they’re still friends. They have their ups and downs, for sure, but at the end of the day, they like and respect each other. That is the constant.

when you find the right person, it’s not a lot of work. People often say, ‘Oh, love takes a lot of work,’ but I’ve found it’s an effort that doesn’t feel like work – it’s just maintenance.

in a good relationship loving someone can be easy.

we’ve realized that the discomfort of not speaking, or of not getting along, is more trouble than trying to work through the actual problem together.

Often, we think romance has to be a room full of roses, but sometimes it’s a Post-it note. Sometimes it’s picking your partner up from work and taking them to a special place to relax. Sometimes it’s taking out the trash before they get home. Romance is about finding ways to show someone they are appreciated.

If it’s a true, solid love, then it can withstand difficulty. It can withstand you being human and being flawed and being unhappy or having a problem with your partner. I wish I had known that love doesn’t disappear when you aren’t quiet and perfect.

although you have to work at a relationship, you shouldn’t have to work at convincing someone to love you. Either they do or they don’t. The loving and being-loved part should be easy.

A series of daily decisions we make in order not to take the people we love for granted.

Tiny, everyday details that quietly say, ‘I love you.’

It’s enormously humbling to realize how many times and ways my partner will pierce that. I can pretend I have all sorts of things together, but when I am at my most broken, he is still the person I turn to.

There are times in my marriage when he has felt like a stranger to me, and I’ve thought, who are you? Those moments can be lonely, but they’re not evidence you’re in the wrong marriage – they just mean that you’re going through a tough moment of change.

That, to me, is what a marriage is: showing up to do the work of re-seeing someone again and again.

Because of that, I was the one that got up in the night and my sense of time and space completely altered. Once my son was born, I saw the world through his eyes and his needs. At first, that made me furious with my partner. I thought, who are you, this adult person who operates with an enormous level of freedom? How do you walk out the door and not think about this as much as I do? Whether you are a biological parent or not, I think there is a primary parent for some reason, who thinks, it is on me to make this work. And when you do that? It isolates you. It puts you in a relationship with the child, and then you have to find your way back to your partner. You have to acknowledge the rage and say to them, ‘I’m pissed that I lost my sense of self and you somehow retained yours.’ You have to address it and move through it.

But now our son is twelve we both feel the same pressure. We are both the people who will always look out for him in the way no one else will.

We have so many secrets and longings and stages and alternate parts of our personality; our partners live with all of that. My partner and I will be sitting together, and he’ll tell me a story from his life, or something he was thinking, that will be new and vitally interesting to me.

I won’t lie: having sex when you’re trying to get pregnant can be as mundane a task as hanging up wet washing. You know it has to be done there and then, however tired you are, or the washing will smell damp . . . or you will miss the fertile window.

You have to continue wanting things so you continue consuming, so you continue stimulating the economy.

And you need to put an equivalent effort into creating sexual experiences and impressing each other in a long-term relationship, even if the anticipation comes from a different place.

It wouldn’t be as much of an obligation for the woman, because she wouldn’t feel she was rejecting his entire humanity just by saying, ‘I’m too tired for sex.’ That has nothing to do with his humanity, she’s just exhausted.

will try to remember that – like anything good in life you want to prioritize – we have to try at

had to take responsibility for my own feelings in order to sustain love – for myself and for Dan.

lack of self-reflection and self-understanding. A lot of people think all you need to do to find a romantic relationship is to find a partner and, actually, the first step isn’t that – it’s to understand what you need and want. I always guide people away from defining what they want in a partner to defining what they want in a partnership, because they can be very different.

what people lose in a long-term relationship is kindness. They lose it for a number of reasons: because once you’ve got close to somebody, they can much more easily push your buttons than a stranger can, and vice versa. You’re unlikely to throw a temper tantrum if a friend does something that irritates you. But with somebody you love and who loves you, often it’s easier to shout than it is to step back and think, no, I ought to treat my partner almost as if they were a stranger. I should be kind and keep a little distance.

keeping the connection while also keeping sufficient distance, so that you can be kind to one another.

‘interdependence’ – a balance between you where your lives are intertwined, but they’re not so intertwined

intertwined that you lose your own identity and the elements that brought you together in the first place.

‘Right, we’ll work at coming back together, but we’re not going to panic, because we trust each other.’

take responsibility for your own feelings. To keep yourself together. To be mature and balanced. To not just think, right, you’re going to have to put up with every single flicker of emotion I have.

‘Look, I’m feeling angry at the moment. I need to find a way to calm down and then I can listen to you, I can reflect on myself, I can

start taking responsibility and we can have a conversation which includes both of us’?

The healthiest couples are those who can argue without feeling threatened, come back together quickly after an argument and see the conversation in context.

The distinction is that both people are working together and making compromises – there’s a devotion to ‘we’ instead of just ‘me’.

Developing the emotional maturity it takes to remain steady, to hold your balance, to have control over your position. To give the person you love the gift of spaciousness. To not lean wholly on them, but to stand beside them.

So what are the things he can do to give back her sense of value?

Show up! Show her she matters. Show her your relationship matters. And demonstrate it.’ There are no set answers for these kinds of things, but the intent has to be clear. And that means demonstrating someone’s importance to you.

when the person who betrayed and lied and deceived has very little empathy.

the person who was betrayed has no ability to engage with the curiosity to understand what the affair was about.

You know, I think we have invested in our relationship and we apply our understanding to it. We understand that you need renewal, you need new experiences, you need adventure. You need to do new things that are outside of the comfort zone. You don’t need to, but for us that is an important piece – a relationship that grows and stays fresh. Part of what brings that is the creation of new experiences.

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.