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

by Natasha Lunn

love is a lifelong project, a story that we can’t skip to the end of. How lucky are we, to know we will never finish it? Because there is never a final page, only a series of beginnings. This is one of them.

This shrinking of the self starts in small ways: pretending you want to see a horror film at the cinema; making Spotify playlists of songs that might impress them instead of the ones you really want to listen to; buying a dress you can’t afford just because you think they’ll like it. But soon, you’re saying no to plans with friends just to keep an evening free on the off-chance they might ask to see you at the last minute. You’re acting like it’s not a big deal that they didn’t show up at your birthday until 11 p.m. 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.

We reach for words like ‘chemistry’ or ‘gut feeling’ because we have nothing tangible to base a feeling on – no examples of kindness or care or connection, just a magnetic draw.

I still believed the act of showing yourself fully to a new person was a risk, but somewhere inside me a fresh knowledge was unfolding: that the risk of not doing so – of never being seen, of never expressing needs, of never giving and accepting real love – was far greater. After years of feeling passive in love, I understood then that we do have a choice, even if it’s difficult to see. Mine was this: to stay in the fantasies inside my head, or to climb out and live.

‘Some mistakes have to be made, they are creative errors.’ And she was right;

So the capacity to say, ‘I could be alone,’ is strangely one of the most important guarantees of one day being with somebody else in a happy way.

When it comes to self-love it’s not so much about loving yourself, but accepting that all human beings have their less impressive sides, and so your less impressive sides don’t cut you off from the possibility of having a good relationship.

That one good evening or one good weekend is not everything. That these feelings are not entirely reliable predictors of the future.

It’s the scale of the idealization. If you’ve forgotten you’ve just met another human being, not a divine creature, then ultimately that person’s going to be very frustrating when you realize they are just another flawed person.

You can’t tell where somebody else is in their life. They might just not fancy you, which is deeply unfortunate, but something to be accepted, not fought over, like bad weather. We don’t control the weather, nor do we control other people’s capacity to find us attractive.

It doesn’t matter who you meet or when you meet them; there’s pain and joy on each side of the ledger. So don’t stick rigidly to one story about what your life means, because it’s likely to be wrong.

I am a fairly grounded, well-rounded person; I don’t need a hero. If I do meet someone, he will be a normal human being who is trying to figure out his way through the world, who is flawed and who will make mistakes, just as I will.

What makes a satisfactory coupling is not thinking, he or she is right for me, from the start. Nobody is right for anyone. Actually, what makes somebody right is commitment.

Life requires of us that we let go of places, things, people that we love, to make room for new life, new love. Development demands loss – it’s unbearable, we resist it, but if we are to grow, we must endure this pain.