|
I know that you lost your sense of self in relationships when you were younger. Why do you think that was?
It was almost as if I relied on other people to tell me who I was. I think a lot of women who were raised in the ‘80s – as I was – were maybe raised in a culture where we were expected to please others, to look outward for approval rather than inward for our own certainty. When you’re at school, that can mean you end up being conscientious to get approval by working hard, or by getting good exam results, or from your teachers saying nice things about you. Then when you’re launched into the world as a putative adult, it becomes more confusing. Because there aren't any exams you can take to tell you that you’re doing a good job. And so I think my equivalent became my intimate relationships.
I was in a series of monogamous relationships from the age of 19 to 36; the longest I was single during that period was a month. That tells you something about my desperation for shoring up my sense of self by being in a couple, with someone who could tell me how I was doing. I thought I was being selfless and sensitive. When a boyfriend asked where I wanted to go for lunch, I’d say, “I don’t know, where do you want to go?” Actually, it was quite selfish. I’d never taken the time to learn who I was, which meant I was making choices without the knowledge of self, and was in relationships I shouldn’t necessarily have been in. I folded myself into a smaller and smaller space, but I also hadn’t put up much resistance to that. In a way, my partners had to claim the empty space I’d left them. It was an unsatisfactory dynamic on lots of levels.
Do you have an example of something that you tolerated in those dynamics, that you now regret? Because I have so many of those! And it still makes me a little sad, to reflect on what I accepted.
One boyfriend said he preferred me without makeup. On one level that’s complimentary; on another, it’s controlling. And - oh gosh this is so gross! - as his birthday present one year he asked to go for dinner without my putting any makeup on. I did it, because I wanted to please him, but I felt very vulnerable. It was one of those trivial but profound examples of a time I effaced my desire in order to please his.
I made a lot of excuses for people too. There were certain relationships where I knew - before I even asked - that my partner would not want to come for dinner with my parents, or would not want to go out with my friends, because it didn’t suit them. I got to the stage where I wouldn’t ask. I would intuit that that was the case, and then I would go along and make excuses on their behalf and normalise everything, even though it wasn’t acceptable. Weirdly, I still have that slight fear with my lovely husband now. I’m always like, Gosh, is it awful to ask him to this lovely dinner because someone wants to meet him and I just don’t want to place demands on his time? And of course I ask him and he’s always really happy to be asked, but it’s almost default conditioning. I still have that slight spasm of worry, that is an inheritance from previous dysfunctional relationships.
Do you think you stayed in dysfunctional dynamics in the past because the fear of being alone was stronger than the fear of being unhappy inside a relationship?
I don’t think it was that being alone was more scary; it was that I didn’t identify it as an unhappy relationship at the time. I didn’t have anything else to compare it to, so I put up with a lot. But I had lovely boyfriends too, and each relationship is its own narrative. In my first marriage I did realise I was unhappy, but it happened in slow motion. A lot of things had to happen for me to get to the point where I thought, I need to leave because there’s no way I can survive in this dynamic. That was a choice where I didn’t have anything to go to, so I would rather be alone. Then in my first relationship post-divorce, I put up with a lot again. I was in my late 30s and I thought, this has to work for me to be able to have a child. It became more loaded, and so I stayed in it longer than I should have. So in each relationship, there was a slightly different reason why I stayed.
In your 30s, after your divorce, did you find it hard to be around friends who were married with kids? Or did you feel you had to make new friends too?
A bit of both. With my truest, closest friends I never felt like that, because they’re so sensitive to my situation, and I happen to love and adore their children. What I would say is that some of the outer ring of acquaintances possibly became quite child-obsessed, and there was an assumption that I was able to fit in with their timetables. I found that tricky to navigate, and it either led to honest conversations, or to friendships becoming more distant.
I think that probably happens anyway at my age, and I have made amazing new friends post-divorce, too. But I did find London stultifying for a time in my mid-to-late 30s, because as wonderful as it can be, it is also still quite conventional. A lot of people settle down around the same time, live in terraced houses, buy Bugaboos and go on playdates. LA was more liberating for me; people were living different kinds of lives. So it was necessary for me to get away physically.
Do you think that your relationship with Justin [Elizabeth's husband] worked because of your age and experience, or because of who he was?
It’s impossible to detach who you are from the experiences that you’ve lived, and I know that I wouldn’t appreciate our relationship with the amount of gratitude I have if I’d met him aged 21.
But it definitely felt different. I’d always had overly-romanticised notions of love as a burst of fireworks, with someone writing you poetry and suggesting that you run away to Catalonia within minutes of meeting. And because Justin and I met when I was 39 - and he was four years older - we’d been around the block and were clear about what we wanted. I’d also got to the stage where I didn’t trust immediate romance that went from nought to 60 in 24 hours. It made me feel unsafe. I’d lost faith in my own judgement. And then, I was confronted with this amazing man who was completely clear in all his forms of communication. Someone saying, “This is important to me, so I think we should pace it appropriately,” turned out to be the most romantic experience of my life. It was a slow-burning fire, and I’m so grateful that, at that age, I was able to appreciate how rare and special that was.
Is there anything about long-term love that’s surprised you, in comparison to what you assumed about it?
Well, it took us six months to say that we loved each other. I remember when Justin told me he loved me, he said, “My saying that to you is now a commitment, that’s why it’s taken until now.” I realised that I felt safe, and that I’d never felt that in a relationship before. Now each day and week and month that passes, we learn more about each other, but I feel more loved as a result, not less. And I never thought that was the case. I always thought you kept someone’s interest by only showing a little enigmatic glimpse of who you really were.
Some people I’ve spoken to who’ve fallen in love after divorce didn’t want to marry again. Others felt marriage took on new meaning because they chose it more consciously the second time. Why was it important to you to get married again?
After divorce I thought, I don’t need to get married again and I don’t want to, because I know what it’s like when it goes wrong. Justin asked about it early on. I said, “No, I don’t need that,” and he said, “Yeah, I don’t think I need it or want it either.” But about a year in, I thought, I’ve changed my mind. I want nothing more than to be married to this man. I didn’t have a logical reason, it’s just how I felt. And we had a series of discussions about it, because Justin didn’t immediately feel the same (he had more of an issue with the concept of marriage as a religious institution). It was a lesson in having great conversations with different opinions. I readily admitted that I'd changed my mind, and said, “I just feel this. I don’t have a logical reason, but my feeling is a fact and I think it’s worth talking to you about.” Then he’d talk about how he felt about religion and how important it was that we kept having gratitude for our relationship. It was so good to realise you can have serious conversations like that and not fear that you’re going to split up, because I never felt that.
And also that you can discuss something like marriage honestly, without seeing someone’s feelings about it as a commentary on their commitment to you, because you are already certain of that.
Exactly. And I’d had several past relationships where I got sick of the classic conversation, “Why do you need a piece of paper to show that our love is real?” But it wasn’t like that with Justin; it was more mature. Eventually, it got to the stage where we realised that what we wanted was a civil partnership with no reference to religion. Also, we both made it clear that, although it was an important and beautiful thing to celebrate, our relationship is so precious that we make a conscious effort to recommit to it every day. Because sometimes what can happen with marriage is that you think, Well, we’re married now, that’s sorted, so I can just relax a bit. But you have to keep paying active attention to the relationship. I think that’s the beauty of second marriages: we both realise that.
You understand that love can be fragile.
Yes, but in a good way that makes it stronger. I think that about life generally. We should pay attention to it, because it’s beautiful and multi-layered and you can easily forget that in the daily stress of getting that letter to the post box in time. It’s a sort of an act of meditation. It’s thinking, Oh, here I am in the present, in this relationship. I’m so grateful for it, let’s continue it in this vein.
Something I’ve been trying to explore in CoL is how we live inside longing without letting it distract us too much from the lives we are living. I know you have been living inside longing during your fertility experiences, and I wonder what you’ve learnt about how to do that?
I’m still learning how to live in longing. It helps that I do things I absolutely love - the podcast, writing books - that give my life meaning and connect me to others in a profound way. It would be difficult if I didn’t have that degree of fulfilment elsewhere. I’m also aware that I’ve got a healthy, wonderful relationship, so I’m thankful for that.
I think I’ve been putting pressure on myself to feel okay about things not going my way, to the extent that I’d always seemingly bounced back from my miscarriages. It was only having another miscarriage in lockdown, that made me realise I hadn’t processed that grief, because I hadn’t even evaluated it as grief or given it the space that it deserved. For me, it’s about combining hope with an acknowledgement of what I’ve lost. Sometimes, I’m going to feel really sad about it. After I had my second Covid vaccine my period was late, and the only time it’s ever been late has been when I’ve been pregnant. I took three pregnancy tests that were negative. I thought, maybe they’re false negatives. I’ll take another one, and another one. That felt so cruel, that I really had to give myself a few days of leaning into that sadness and shaking my fist at the sky. And that’s been the biggest thing that I’ve learnt over the last year: I’m allowed to grieve and I’m allowed to hope. There’s space for both.
I remember Justin wrote on twitter that he had ‘journeyed through the loss of our two pregnancies with you’ and I thought that was a beautiful way to describe it, because you do move through a loss like that alongside each other. Do you think that experience has changed the depth of your intimacy?
Oh, I’m tearing up hearing you say that, because that’s exactly how I feel. Justin and I have been through two miscarriages together. But when I had my first one I was in a very different relationship and I felt totally alone. Not alone in the sense that I had my incredible best friend and my mother, but totally alone in the relationship. And it could not be a more different experience [with Justin], in the sense that seeing how much something like that affects the person you love can be a beautiful thing, once the initial tragedy and shock and sadness has passed. Because you understand how deeply they feel for you, and for the shared vision of your future life together. And yes, it’s completely deepened and strengthened my love and admiration for my husband, and not everyone gets to say that. So I'm glad for that.
And sharing a grief is a very intimate thing. Maybe with siblings, if you lose a parent you share grief with one other person in that way, but a miscarriage was the first time I shared a grief with someone, and I was so struck by the raw, fresh intimacy of that.
Definitely. There’s only one other person who will fully understand and, if you’re lucky, there’s one other person in the room with you at the scan which showed there was no heartbeat. That’s the person. And it’s a very, very powerful thing.
Have your losses and experiences in fertility changed your understanding of love more broadly, too?
Definitely. It’s also made me love myself more. I hope that doesn’t sound navel-gazing, but it’s made me appreciate my own strength and my own feelings about motherhood. I’m in no doubt that it’s something that I really would love; that in itself is a form of love. It’s also made me so in love with friends who’ve been there for me in myriad ways. Whenever you go through something tough it builds up your stores of wisdom, and it’s sort of made things more acute. I’m more aware of the love I have to give, which then in turn makes me more loving. And I’ve connected with thousands of women, and some men, who have travelled a similar path. That is a form of love, too, an understanding and shared vulnerability that I find very strengthening.
What do you wish you’d known about love?
That I didn’t need to prove myself for love that was worthy of me.
|
