Book Review: Conversations on Love
‘Nobody is right for anyone. Actually, what makes somebody right is commitment. Then when you’re committed to each other and you have true dialogue, that means you allow the other to impact upon you and they allow you to impact on them. You’re not rigid and unchanging; you are moved by each other’
Damn. And I mean damn, did this book make me cry. It makes the morning commute into the office a little awkward, certainly. But this book hit me right in the gut – at times I felt very called out because I’m a twenty-something-year-old-still-figuring-it-all-out and wow it really hit home. Especially when Natasha Lunn talks about our unrelenting expectations on love and what we want in a romantic partner. I found it poignant to realise that we end up heaping a load of wants, needs and checkpoints onto a whole other person who will never live up to them because they’re their own person. We’ve given them an impossible task. We justify the endless lists and expectations based on long-established romantic tropes. In reality, we should take a good honest look at ourselves and realise that we are very messy wonderful people trying to find love – in all its glorious and sometimes heart-breaking forms.
It's not always about romantic love – Lunn interviews several people, some who have gone through divorce, miscarriages, loss of a loved one, found new love in the unlikeliest of places and those who are content with the love of friends, family and, indeed within themselves. Lunn takes us on a very cathartic, rough, but warm journey navigating what love is, what it means and how we feel all factions of it. We can only understand what love is and truly appreciate it when we go through great loss and pain or just the general ups and downs of life. That hit me like a wrecking ball and left me in a slight blubbering mess. I tried to pass it off as a bad cold, but I doubt I was fooling anybody.
I think the interview that really stood out to me was the interview with actor, Greg Wise whose sister died of terminal cancer. He had moved in to care for her until she died. Familial love is something that we all share – some are luckier than others. But looking at life and love during end-of-life care was something that hit very close to home. Just because the person has died doesn’t mean your love for them has either –it multiplies in the stories you continue to tell. You never truly lose them.
The other that really made me stand to attention was the first interview with Alain de Botton who has studied the psychology of love. Wow did I feel called out in this one. Especially about how we end up imagining what life would look like with someone we’re newly dating – I mean… I felt attacked, to be honest with you. But it is true, you have an imagined version of someone and then there is the reality. Dreams and reality don’t always meet in the middle so we’re only setting ourselves up for disappointment. Ouch.
Overall, this was a life lesson and one I didn’t know I needed. Everyone is still learning and growing. Love in all its many factions is one of the places where I think we can all continue to grow. Romantic relationships are not the be-all and end-all, there are other ways of seeking it out and having a life that is fulfilled by romantic love. You don’t always get what you want, but love doesn’t come easy to everyone – even though I wish it damn well would!