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In your memoir you wrote, ‘in the ordinariness of the everyday, the steadfastness of love is revealed.’ What does the steadfastness of love mean to you?
Love is this invisible thing in the atmosphere that connects you to someone, and you can sense the feelings between you and them. It’s ever-moving, like the sea. But it’s also a stability that I never expected, like a steady hand on my shoulder. I’m reluctant to use the word ‘rock’, because it’s clichéd, and I don’t think it’s quite right either, because Richard is not the only thing that anchors me. But we do find this constant flow and balance together. Especially with our children, sometimes I feel we’re being pushed along by a current, and yet love means we’ve always got this rope to hold onto, that keeps us steady.
It’s difficult to describe something so quiet, that’s effortless and effortful, the easiest thing and also the most complicated.
Yes, it’s quieter than we’re brought up to believe it will be. That’s not to say it’s any less meaningful — maybe it’s more meaningful because it’s quieter. I know it is there in those everyday moments when you don’t always have to put something into words, because the other person just gets it. They understand a certain look, or something simple in your body language, and then they know what you feel without you needing to say it. I love the way you both know when it’s time to leave, or when something’s awkward or overwhelming, without it needing to be said. It’s like you have your own language, of being understood.
You wrote about feeling lonely when you were single, even though you had friends. Looking back, can you see where that loneliness came from?
I was worried I would be alone forever, and that I wouldn't have strength to live on my own and be on my own. And yet, I never thought I could tell anyone that, because we were in our 20s, renting in London, and supposed to be having the time of our lives. I didn’t think I could show my friends that part of myself, or my true worries. I’d also landed a job I’d always dreamed of, on a newspaper, so there was shame bound up in it too. I thought, get a grip, don’t be so self-indulgent.
I wish I'd had someone to talk to, because sometimes you just need someone to see and understand how you are really feeling. That’s what I feel grateful for now: I do feel understood, and I did need someone to be that person for me. I know not everyone feels that way, but it’s something I needed. I also don’t want to paint it as everything depended on meeting Richard, but that whole moment and what it stood for - being able to choose our relationship and to stand up for myself - that was a turning point. It was a moment of growing up.
It can be difficult to write about wanting a romantic relationship in a way that doesn’t imply it is the only thing that can make someone happy. But it’s something I wanted to be honest about too, because for a long time, like you, I didn’t feel I could admit that I wanted that.
Yes, and it happens with writing about motherhood as well, doesn’t it? Because it means different things to different people, and it doesn’t mean you don’t understand or respect why people don’t want to have children, but equally, it might have mattered to you. So it is hard. But wanting to be loved shouldn’t necessarily have to be justified. I think we all have a right to be loved.
I know writing is important to you, and you felt unable to pursue it fully when your kids were young. Does that get easier as they grow older?
It does, but even though they’re at school, I don’t forget. A big part of my headspace is, ‘Are they okay? Is the eldest eating his lunch? Will the middle one be okay getting changed at swimming?’ I used to think, They’re independent, they just get on with their lives and you get on with yours. But I’m beginning to accept that feeling of worrying about them will never go away, because they’re a part of you. They’re always there even when they’re not.
How did having children change romantic love for you?
We have three little boys, my eldest was not yet four when my youngest was born, and we were like rabbits in headlights. The intensity of it brought us closer, because we had no family nearby and there was no one else to depend on but each other.
I suppose that romantic notion of love – gestures, anniversaries – definitely flies past you, but it also felt meaningful to be doing it together. Now the boys are older, there is more space for us to be us. It’s not as intense and emotional as those new-born days; they are exhausting and draining, and you lose sight of what is happening in the wider world. With our first, I had a difficult labour and a very difficult period afterwards, and the steadfastness of love got me through. I had a sense of overwhelming gratitude for the support of someone who understood what I needed in that difficult moment. I couldn’t put into words how much that meant, because some people didn’t know the right thing to say. Others offered advice that wasn’t helpful. But Richard made me feel deeply understood, and that is what got us through those years. It’s only now I can appreciate that, and I can see how it deepened love.
I feel that too, but I’ve also been thinking about the versions of ourselves that my husband and I no longer inhabit as new parents. We can acknowledge them, but we can’t inhabit them in this particular moment.
And when you meet those versions again, in time, they too will have changed. I think the versions of each other that meet in the present will always change, and the people we’ve left in the past are shadows that will always be there as well.
Obviously because Richard converted to your faith, that showed you things were serious early on, but did you ever worry about committing so quickly?
I often look back at that moment of telling my family and don’t know where I found the confidence. I can only attribute it to the fact that my certainty felt solid. I felt on top of the world, but also that I had my feet firmly on it. Suddenly what once felt so unrealistic felt possible, and I knew if I didn’t find the confidence to say something to my family about it, there was a risk that that possibility might pass by.
I don’t ever remember wondering, ‘Is this what I really want?’ because I already knew, very deeply, in the same way I know instinctively when a piece of writing is working. Or how you instinctively know when your child is uncomfortable and needs you to remove them from a situation, in a way that someone else wouldn’t notice.
Have there been any periods in your relationship that were more challenging, when you had to bridge a distance?
In the early days of parenthood, I think the demands on the mother can be vastly different from the father. We both knew we wanted a family, and I’d never stopped to think, ‘What will this do to my career?’, because I’d been told I could have it all. Also, I thought I could write while the children were napping. I had no idea.
There would be moments when I’d read the Guardian on my phone while I was breastfeeding – I can say this to you now, years later – and I’d feel deeply jealous of friends who were writing pieces that I couldn’t. It felt like no one would remember me, and that I would never write again. I want to laugh it off and say I was being dramatic, but at the time those feelings were real and true. I wanted to be with this beautiful baby, and I also wanted editors to commission me. I’d say to Richard, ‘There’s no way you will possibly ever understand what it is like, because writing is the only thing that I’ve ever wanted to do, and it’s gone, and no one prepared me for it.’ Those were the moments where it felt like he was on another shore.
How did you navigate those together?
Even though there would be nothing he could say, he gave me space to temporarily grieve for something I felt I’d lost. I’m grateful he didn’t rise to my provocation of saying, ‘You couldn’t possibly understand’. He would hold space for me to share my feelings, and that takes a lot of strength, to allow someone to say things that could hurt you from a place of love. And even to allow them to hurt you, because you understand they are upset and feel something deeply.
With another person that could’ve escalated, because if a person needs to hurt you back then it can go on and on. The fact that he didn’t do that, even though I might have pushed for it, made me feel very understood. He’d say, ‘You’re right, this is absolutely shitty. It’s not fair on you. What do we need to do for you to be able to write again?’ But actually, I couldn’t write with two children under two, even if they weren’t with me, because my head wasn’t in the right space. It was this feeling of, I want it, but I can’t have it, but I want it, but I can’t do it.
Your memoir, How We Met, and your short story collection, Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love, both explore love in different ways. In your fiction, what are you trying to examine in love?
There can be a dark side to love, an unkindness, and you can have big arguments over trivial things. I’m interested in how you can potentially say horrible things to people and then pretend you never said them, and somehow that’s excused just because you’re related. Where does that licence to hurt come from? Why does love give you the right to do that? That’s a question I find fascinating.
There are also moments when you can look at someone you love and feel so deeply annoyed by them, or not attracted to them. And then a day later, you can look at them and feel intensely in love. It’s easy to accept how quickly those feelings can flip in ourselves, and harder to accept the moments when our partner might feel deeply annoyed by or not attracted to us too.
I believe the idea that relationships are meant to be easy. To a certain extent that is true, but they are also complex. You can’t pin them down. There’s no way to define what you feel in your heart or your head.
All my [characters] love or have loved, or have been hurt by love, and I’m trying to understand how that shapes you and colours your next experience of love. These moments you describe - where you feel annoyed or not attracted or overwhelmingly joyful - they can exist side by side, one after the other. But you never quite forget either one. Or, if you do, the next time it comes round it catches you by surprise again, as if you’d never felt it the first time.
After a decade of marriage, what have you learnt about how to sustain a relationship?
While we were talking, Richard came in and left a cup of tea on my desk. We’d just come in from the rain, cold and wet, and it reminded me of the steadfastness we were talking about; not the tea, but the small significance of simply thinking of someone else for a moment, and of what they might like or need. It reminded me how love can sometimes be big but also made up of small stuff; how sometimes the small stuff might not even feel like love, but it is.
What I’m beginning to understand is that the kindness love requires is effortful. I told you about those moments where we felt a distance between us when I would be upset. But if or when they happen now, they’re less intense, because I am kinder in my feelings towards Richard. The kindness comes in the effort to understand that certain things are not his fault. Whereas previously I would say, ‘There’s no way you can possibly understand,’ now I would say, ‘Well, in one way you can’t understand, and this is why, but I want you to understand.’ I make space to hear him out and to explain myself in a way that isn’t just an overwhelming rush of emotion. And it takes effort to step back, to have perspective and to make that choice, instead of rushing into saying whatever it is you want to. You have to make a choice to love in that moment, to be kind. I think that’s what sustaining a relationship is about, and it looks easier than it is.
I keep learning that love requires so much self-possession.
Yes, and it’s not an effort I resent making; it makes me calmer. It’s the same with children: I’ve learnt it is better to take that breath before losing your temper. When you don’t pause to be kind in those moments, you can say things you don’t mean, and will regret.
I sometimes think of the worst things I’ve said to the people I love, or that they’ve said to me, as little dents in each of us, that we can paint over but can never quite be repaired.
There’s that feeling of trembling after you’ve said something horrible in the heat of the moment, an out-of-body experience where you’re seeing yourself saying things that you don’t mean and then it’s done. You know how much it’s going to hurt the other person, but you go ahead and say it anyway, and the instant you’ve said it you feel deep regret.
There’s a shame that comes with it, too. You think, ‘I can’t believe I’m so mean. If anyone else knew, they would think I was a horrible person.’ I find that tantalising to write about, because we all have the potential in us to be that hurtful, and yet it’s a choice to either say it or not say it; to make things better or not to. Isn’t it amazing that most of us don’t say the mean thing? Isn’t that credence to humanity that most of us, in our day-to-day business, don’t set out to hurt people, and yet the potential is always there? In my fiction I love that I can explore what happens when you do act recklessly and say the mean thing. And how that momentary hate, even though it doesn’t last for long, can override all the love in that moment.
Finally, what do you wish you’d known about love?
That I would find it. Often, when I was writing How We Met, I had a haunting vision of myself when I was younger. I could see my smile, but I also knew what was going on behind it: the self-doubt, the uncertainty. I could see how desperately I just wanted to come home to someone. It mattered to me in a way that I don’t think you’re always allowed to say that it matters, because it’s maybe not the thing that young independent women in their 20s working on a newspaper are allowed to say openly. But I felt it very deeply. So if I could go back, that’s what I would tell myself: love comes, and you do deserve it.
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