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Sheila Heti
I think my teenage self knew the same things about love that I know now. It is the in-between self that I would've liked to talk to. Because my teenage self knew that love could be hard and scary and terrible and wonderful and risky, and I was open to that. It was only after the initial heartaches that I became afraid, and started to look for something that would be less painful, or permanent in a way that nothing human is permanent.
My twenty-something self felt she had done everything wrong every time she experienced pain in love. I would say to her, just because it was hard doesn’t mean you were doing anything wrong. That is the nature of love, and you were right.
I wanted something more like friendship from romantic love in my twenties, and that was a mistake. It was a way of trying to protect myself, to not experience what real love makes you feel, which is a kind of unfamiliarity, and an encounter with a person who is a true unknown, who is different from you, and who maybe you don’t understand. It’s possible that true love always keeps the other person beyond your understanding, and that’s why you feel like it should last forever. Because even with forever, you will never understand.
Susie Orbach
I wish I’d known how big that word is, how capacious it is, how many different expressions it can have, and how many ordinary graces people can give to each other.
Roxane Gay
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.
Sarah Hepola
That love comes in so many more forms than simply romantic love. And that the love of a partnership can be an incredibly important and transforming experience, but only one of many important and transforming experiences. As somebody who has searched far and wide for somebody to love her, I feel like I missed that the great love story of my life is really that I was born to two parents who love me, and that I never had to ask for their love.
One of the tricks of this life is being grateful for the things that you are given. And boy, I can’t think of anything –anything – being better for me in my life and my growth than having had that from the very beginning. I know that other people don’t have it and I don’t know how to begin being grateful for getting that. I think that the search for love as I understand a lot of my life and my work to be, is also the search to see that you already have it.
Andre Aciman
I wish I’d slept with more people. I wish I’d felt less inhibited and less fearful of what others might think or say. I wish I’d had more courage.
Ayisha Malik
You can be seen by various people in different ways, and no one person, not even your parents, can really see the whole of who you are. So it's about finding all the different people you can love, and seeing the positivity each of them brings to your life.
Mira Jacob
I was so worried about presenting myself in a certain light because I didn’t want to give up the mystery of who I was or lose someone’s interest. I didn’t know there are always new things that you will learn about your partner and they will always be a mystery too. The idea that they hold worlds and worlds inside of them that are inaccessible to you at certain points but can be accessed at others, is tremendously gratifying.
I can’t tell you the number of times that my partner will tell me a story from his life, or just something he was thinking, that will be so new and vitally interesting to me. I did not know that that’s how love worked; I thought it was like 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.
Alain de Botton
I wish I’d known to be calmer about the whole process. And that things would work out or they wouldn’t, and even then, that would be fine too. This black and white model of ‘it’s got to be like this and then it will be perfect’ just doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter who you meet or when you meet [someone]; 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. In fact, there are many ways of living this life.
Candice Carty-Williams
That friends will love you for who you are, not only because you give them something.
Jeanette Winterson
I wish I had been less influenced by any particular script when I was growing up. I had to leave home because I was in love with another woman, so I can only imagine how much freer and healthier it would’ve been if I didn't have a family who said, "If you feel like this you have to leave. This kind of love is wrong." I'm sorry that people have to fight for the love they want to express. I wish I'd known that you didn't have to, and that there would be a better world.
Will Storr
I wish I’d known that I wasn't broken; I was just in the wrong relationships. Because I went through hell trying to fix myself. I really, really did. I thought, there's something wrong with me and I don't know what it is. I can't fix it. If I’d have known it was just a case of meeting someone else, that would have saved me a lot of heartache.
Gill Hammond
Feeling the pain that comes with love is enriching. Don’t push it away. As one of the nurses said about [my husband] Joe, “He is living deeply, and it’s depth of life, not length of life, that matters.” The other thing is, Tom did a project on atoms for school and it was so helpful. That’s the way we talk about Joe: atoms don’t disappear, you can’t lose them, they’re not gone, they’ve just turned into something else. So somewhere, somehow, in some place, Daddy is with us. Joe said that to me, actually. He said, “I’m going to be with you, because you can’t extract me.” And then he said, ‘I’ll be in the washing basket, I’ll be in the toaster.
Hilary Mantel
I was young when I got married – just past my 20th birthday. Some people told me in no uncertain terms I was making a mistake. I took it meekly. Looking back, I should have punched them. Why do older people think they can be so rude to the young? How dare they foist their own soured expectations on me? Nothing is more empowering and more enlarging to the spirit than the first rush of passion, and it’s deeply nasty to try to quash it. And if young people make a mistake – some mistakes have to be made, they are creative errors. You shouldn’t try to live a life where the first object is to protect yourself from regret.
Lemn Sissay
That everybody wants love, but many people are afraid to want it.
Heather Havrilesky
I always overvalued love and I’m learning not to now. I’m learning to value my imagination and my ability to create art more than being adored by someone or adoring them. I can still have connections to other people. My marriage is still a big part of my life. But I do think there’s a joy in being alive that’s not dependent on any person at all. And there’s something permanent about recognising that the defining energy of my life is now centred within me, not defined by anyone else.
Sandra Newman
When I was in my 20s, a guy I was sleeping with once turned to me and said, ‘I’ve had a great revelation. There is nothing you can do wrong in a relationship.’ I thought, how can that possibly be true? People have done lots of wrong things in relationships I've had with them, and I've done tonnes of wrong things in relationships too. But he said, ‘No, you are the person you are and they're the person they are.’ Even though it's a ridiculous blanket statement, over the years I've come more around to that point of view. You should accept the things that happen in a relationship are the things that happen.
Dr Megan Poe
I would tell my younger self: let yourself be seen. Let yourself be known. Feel your power in the world. Know that things evolve. Know that people can each have their own stories – and that’s okay.
Amelia Abraham
Just because a relationship didn’t have a happy ending, or didn’t last a lifetime, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great love.
Diana Evans
There are different kinds and different stages of love. But I'm enjoying learning all this. I never really wish for previous knowledge because I enjoy the course of life. If I have an accident and I get a scar, I actually like the scar because it shows the course of a life, it shows a journey. And that's what life is: the experience of learning.
Juno Dawson
That love is like mixing paint: sometimes when you mix two people together they make a horrible colour. Some people do bring out the absolute worst colours in you and, if that’s the case, it’s the relationship that’s flawed, not you. You’re not meant to lose sleep or cry over love. You shouldn’t have to fight for it. If it feels like a fight, don’t waste your time.
Lady Antonia Fraser
Prince charming is not necessarily the most charming prince on the block.
Philippa Perry
That I needn't worry about not being good enough. And that love is about finding a home. Our parents aren't going to live forever, so I think we need to find a tribe, a family, a community or a group that feels like home. A place where we feel seen, and where we can see.
Jude Kelly
I’ve understood more and more how knowing that I was loved by my parents, really fundamentally knowing it, has been very important. That’s a big ingredient of knowledge, which sort of influences how I now see a lot of other people’s behaviour, when maybe they lacked that.
I suppose the other thing I wish I’d known was that of course you can love people for your sake, because of what you want. But really you also need to be able to love them for what they need. Giving love is tremendous, so is receiving it. If your tendency is to want to give rather than receive, or to receive rather than give, then you need to look at that. You need a balance of both.
Dr John Gottman
As a scientist I’ll always ask, is there one underlying thing that organises all of the findings? And that one underlying thing is to have this motto: when your partner is upset, the world stops and you listen, and that’s an opportunity for connection. It means that whatever adversity you’re facing, whatever your partner is concerned about, it’s something that you know about and connect over. Having an emotional check-in periodically with your partner during the day is a great way to say, “What’s in your heart? What’s on your mind right now? I want to know what you’re feeling and what you need.” Having that motto is what makes a real difference in relationships.
Dr Julie Gottman
That it doesn’t make me needy to express my needs. In fact, there’s no such thing as ‘needy’. That doesn’t mean my partner has to fulfil all my needs, but it’s okay for me to voice them.
Dr Lucy Kalanithi
This isn’t something I necessarily wish I knew, but I used to think that a wedding was the destination and the kiss on the day was the most romantic part. Now I think of it as merely the beginning, which is what it actually is. I don't think I quite recognised that before, but now, when I listen to the vows and they say ‘in sickness and in health,’ that's the part that seems so romantic to me. That what you're signing up for - you're signing up to be vulnerable together. To love is to be brave.
Janine di Giovanni
Trust yourself. That’s the wonderful thing about getting older, the greatest gift that comes along with the wrinkles and the grey hair is your gut. I would also say: don’t be afraid to leave relationships when they’re not good. It’s in our nature to endure, and we often forget our value. I think if you’re not being valued and cherished, you need to go. It’s very hard for us to walk away, and sometimes I’ve stayed in situations for years longer than I should have. So if I was talking to my 17-year-old self, I’d say, ‘You’re going to meet a lot of people along the way and some of them you shouldn’t invest as much time in, because there are other things out there you should be learning.’ We do fear that we’re going to be alone and that there’s nothing else on the other side. But sometimes you have to take that dive. And, usually, there’s something else out there.
Joe Hammond
That it would come, one day.
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