Natasha: There is a character in your new novel, Violeta, who says that when you fall in love later in life there is a sense of urgency that changes it. How does that urgency change love?
Isabel Allende: When I was 72, I divorced my husband, Willie, with whom I had been for 28 years. I thought I would be alone for the rest of my life. Everybody said, ‘How silly of you to divorce at 72, you’ll be alone,’ and I said, ‘Well, it takes courage to be alone, but it takes more courage to stay in a relationship that is not working.’ I bought a very small house with one bedroom and moved in with my dog. After my former husband died, I inherited a second dog, so already the house was feeling a little tight. Then a couple of years later this man called Roger, in New York, heard me on the radio and contacted me through my foundation. He started emailing me every morning and evening for five months, until finally I went to New York and met him. And we just connected. He sold his house, left everything, and moved to California. Eventually we married, because for him that was important.
Not for you?
Not at all. I’d been married before. Marriages come and go, and they also end, like any relationship. To be with him was a commitment already - that was enough for me, but not for him. And when I say a sense of urgency, this year we will be 80. Both of us think often of how little time we have left, so we try to live our love in ways I never thought of before. With other relationships I had a lot of time, but now I don’t. There’s no time for pettiness, for little fights, for jealousy, for getting irritated because he leaves his socks on the stairs. It doesn’t matter, I can live with the socks on the stairs. And he’s very patient with me too.
Are there things that feel the same as falling in love when you were younger, and others that are different?
I never quite surrendered to any relationship. I am private, completely self-sufficient and very independent. So although I can be madly in love, I don’t give my core to anybody. But in this relationship, I can relax. There’s nothing I have to prove. It doesn’t matter to me how he sees me, because I know I’m completely accepted. There is more kindness and more laughter, too, because we give ourselves time for that. There’s less sex, of course, than when your hormones are raging at 30, but it’s compensated by more intimacy and kindness. It took me almost 80 years to get here.
You said earlier that it takes more courage to stay in a relationship that’s not working, but some people do stay in unhappy relationships because they are afraid of being alone. Why do you think you weren’t afraid of that?
Because I am self-sufficient and I have a community. I know all my neighbours by name - if I cook too much food I give it to a neighbour. My son lives 12 minutes away with my daughter-in-law, who works with me, and we’re in touch daily. I also have my dogs. Being without a partner is not the same as being alone. I can be without a partner, but I have all this, my work and my foundation. Most people don’t have that and they’re afraid of being alone. But I think if you are available, if you start doing things for other people – volunteer, help a neighbour – then you are never alone.
Thinking about giving love, you once said about your family and dogs, ‘I don’t know if they even like me, but who cares, because loving them is my joy.’ Have you found just as much joy in giving love as receiving it?
I don’t think they can be separated. How can you ask for love if you’re not willing to give just as much, or more? The thing with love is that it multiplies. If you care or do something for somebody, which is a form of love, the feedback is greater than whatever you give. My daughter’s mantra in life was, you only have what you give. If you have a story and you don’t share the story, there is no story. If you have money and don’t share the money, what’s the point? Are you going to live with your money in a bag in your bedroom? So the idea of connecting with others through caring, service, laughter and a celebration of life, which is so prevalent in some cultures and so forgotten in others…it’s important.
And to connect you have to get out of your comfort zone. It’s the same in an intimate relationship. If you don’t come forward and give yourself to the relationship, the other person might not do it. But if you take the initiative, it usually works.
You said sex declines, but intimacy increases in other places. What does that intimacy look like?
At our age we have ailments. I don’t, because I am - touch wood - incredibly healthy. But [Roger] has problems with his health. Let me give you an intimate example: he has sleep apnoea so needs to sleep with a machine on his face. That interferes with the sex life of anybody, let alone if you’re old, because it’s like a barrier. You’re connected with a tube to a machine and you sleep all night like that. When I was younger that would have been a huge problem for me, because it’s ugly, it’s noisy, it interferes with the relationship and it makes the other person look sick. But I learned very quickly to listen to the machine as if it was water running. I pretend it is a noise that calms me down and puts me to sleep.
When I was young, I wanted the man to look good, to take off his clothes and be muscular, tall, groomed and to smell good. Today it’s not that important. I am still trying to look my best, but for me, not for him. Because what he sees is the person, he doesn’t care what I’m wearing, or whether I’ve put on makeup. He always thinks I’m beautiful, no matter what. Even when I have a horrible cold!
Photo credit: Lori Barra
In Violeta a grandmother writes to her grandson. How has the experience of being a grandparent felt different to parenthood?
I suppose it’s different for everybody. My grandchildren were born when my daughter was dying, and I was so immersed in taking care of her. I did adore them, I saw them every day and told them stories every night at bedtime for years. But they grew up, and now I love them with a distance. I don’t love them the way I love my son, by no means. The generation gap is important, because I live in another world. Sometimes when we all get together, they talk among themselves and I don’t understand what they’re saying, because they’re talking about video games and music and stuff that is completely out of my world. I went to get a hearing aid because I thought I couldn’t hear well, but my hearing is perfect. It’s just that I don’t understand what the heck they are saying!
In Violeta you also wrote a character who lost her daughter. Was that a way to explore some of your feelings about losing your daughter? Or did it feel very separate?
It didn’t feel separate. When my daughter died I wrote a book called Paula. I expressed everything I felt in the moment, because I started writing it a few days after she died. But the character in [Violeta] is based on my stepdaughter, Jennifer, who gave birth to a little girl and then died. She was an addict and I had immense compassion for her. My former husband, Willie, had three children [who] were all addicts, but her life was worse, because she was more vulnerable than the men. She got pregnant and had abortions and venereal diseases; all the stuff that women get in that kind of life that men don’t, or get less. They all died of overdoses and addiction, but her life was worse. Although [the character] is a more refined version of Jennifer, I was watching that life very closely. I had the information and the feelings.
As a step-parent, did you feel you couldn’t step in as much with their addiction, or did you feel just as much responsibility to?
No, I didn’t, because I only helped raise the youngest. With the other two, I got to their life when they were already adults. As a step-parent I tried to get involved with the youngest, but I realised that was interfering with my relationship with Willie. The first thing a therapist said was, ‘Stay in your part. Don’t get involved, because you can’t.’ I didn’t pay attention in the beginning, but in time I realised there was very little I could do, and if those had been my children there would have been very little I could do as well. Because there is a point in addiction at which you don’t deal with a person. There’s a wall that separates you completely, emotionally, physically, in every possible way.
I wonder what you have learnt about being a good parent. Maybe ‘good’ is the wrong word, but just being a parent, or accepting yourself as a parent.
I’ve always said I was a terrible mother, because I was always working. I got bored with the kids. Kids are boring.
I remember confessing to a group of friends who were mothers that I found playing with my baby all day boring when she was young, and as soon as I did, others said the same. But it feels like you can’t always say that.
Yes, that’s the stuff you cannot admit, but it’s true. Kids are boring, and they take all your time and energy. I had three jobs and I was always absent, but I had a community of women that helped me raise my kids. First, the housekeeper, and I’m extremely grateful to her, because she was in the house with the kids while I was working outside it. My mother-in-law also lived a block away, she was there every day, and I had an adopted grandmother who was there for my kids. Now, if you ask my son, he will say that I was always present, that I was an extraordinary mother. Why does he think that way? I have no idea, because that’s not the truth. Maybe he felt very loved because first we were living in a sort of extended family in Chile. Then the military coup happened and we had to live in exile in Venezuela, where we didn’t have anybody. My husband went to work in another province, far away, only visiting every two months, more or less. So I was alone with the kids and the three of us became very close.
But a few years later, I betrayed them: I fell in love with another guy and I left them. They didn’t forgive me for years. They didn’t want to talk about it. But much later in life, I said to my son, ‘I’ve always regretted the fact that I did that, I must have been crazy.' I don’t think I was so much in love, I was depressed and lonely and distressed. But why did I leave behind my kids? So I apologised and he said, ‘Thank you for saying that. It’s good that you said it. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.’ And now, we’re really close. We work together.
Did losing your daughter Paula change your understanding of love?
I think I’ve learned to imagine that love lasts, even if the other person is dead, because I feel my daughter’s presence as an exercise in love and imagination and memory. And now I’m in the same process with my mum. I was very close to her, and she died before the pandemic. Now when I wake up every morning around 5am, the dogs are on the bed, my husband is with the machine, snoring, and I have time in the darkness to say good morning to my spirits: to Paula, to my mother, to my stepfather. To be with them. That’s an exercise in remembering and love.
But also, after Paula died, I realised that the most important thing in my life was my son, more than anything else, by far. Nicolas is the pillar of my life, what sustains me in this world and keeps me here. My love for my children became, in Paula’s case, sort of magical thinking. But with Nicolas, it’s an everyday exercise in love.
What do you wish you’d known about love?
I fell in love with my first husband when I was 16 or 17 years old, and five years later we married. By 21, I was a mother. And I was like a mother to [my husband] too. He was childish. Even being the feminist I was, I never demanded of him to be a father and to be present, as I was. I lost respect for him rapidly. So one of the things I wish I had known was not to get married so young, because I didn’t know who I was or who he was. And also, to establish a more egalitarian relationship in which I was not the one giving and giving all the time. That marriage lasted 29 years.
Three months after we divorced I met Willie. That relationship was completely different – we had things in common, we had a life together - and I lived with him 28 years. What could I have done differently? Maybe I should have divorced him earlier, because the marriage started deteriorating and I lived eight more years with him trying to fix it. There’s a point when you have to give up, when you say, ‘Okay, this is not working.’ But for me it takes a long time.
How do you think you know, when you reach that point?
Maybe you only know looking back. When I was with Willie, it was when I realised there was no kindness on his part. With my other husband, it was when I lost respect for him. I didn’t like him any more and I didn’t want him to touch me. That’s the moment when I should have said, ‘It’s done.’ But I stayed with him nine more years, trying to fix it again, until one day I said, ‘What am I doing here?’ He came to give me a bill or something, and said, ‘We have to talk about this.’ And I said, ‘No, we have to talk about our marriage.’ He replied, ‘Yes, I realise that you are not happy,’ and I said, ‘No, and I don’t think you are either.’ ‘What shall we do?’ he said. And I said, ‘Let’s separate.’ The marriage ended that day.
With Willie it was the same. Our therapist asked us to write down on a piece of paper what we wanted from the other person. In the next session they asked, ‘Did you write what I asked you to?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ And Willie said, ‘No, I didn’t have time.’ The therapist said, ‘Give your paper to Willie, let him read it aloud.’ But Willie said, ‘You don’t have to give me the paper, I know exactly what it says, but I’m sorry, I can’t give it.’ What I was asking was for kindness. And then I said, ‘Okay, then the marriage is over.’ In five days he was gone. In both cases there were no lawyers involved, no fighting for the money, nothing. And we remain friends.
And what’s different about your marriage to Roger now?
It’s easy. There is no struggle, no therapist, no fighting of any kind. Well, once (it was about parking). We are careful with each other. Sometimes I lose my patience, because I am a very organised person and I hate mess. In a small house if you are not organised it’s really messy. So if I step on something he has left on the floor I get furious. Then I come to this little attic where I am right now, close the door, breathe in, breathe out, and try to be reasonable about what has happened. It’s something on the floor. It’s not a character flaw, it’s not a betrayal, it’s not something that he has done to bother me. He’s just messy. Too bad. It doesn’t matter. And I’m sure he does the same. I’m sure that he hides in the garage to scream about me, probably!
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*Violeta by Isabel Allende
A book about courage and family and loss, that explores a hundred years of history, two pandemics, and the many ways we are shaped by love and death. (Published by Bloomsbury and out now)
*This paragraph on Isabel's website before her biography:
'It is very strange to write one’s biography because it is just a list of dates, events, and achievements. In reality, the most important things about my life happened in the secret chambers of my heart and have no place in a biography. My most significant achievements are not my books, but the love I share with a few people—especially my family—and the ways in which I have tried to help others.'
*GOODBEADS
My friend Emma decided to create GOODBEADS after suffering from postnatal depression following her daughter Sidney's birth in 2020. Which is why £4 from every GOODBEADS sale goes to support Pandas, a charity for parents experiencing mental illness. But as well as supporting a good cause, the beaded bracelets are so beautiful and cool, and make the best personalised gifts! I've been wearing mine every day since I bought it. I think you can tell they are made with purpose and care.
*Bless the Telephone by Labi Siffre
This always makes me want to call the people I love. (It's strange, the way you make me feel / With just a word or two / I'd like to do the same for you)
*This recipe journal
I am still a pretty average cook. It's something I've only started to enjoy in my thirties (like sport, I put it off because I was bad at it, and so never improved!). But now that I'm finding confidence and pleasure in cooking, I want to collect all the recipes I'm learning too. I've started in this Papier 'Food for Friends' journal.
*Don't Buy Her Flowers Gift Boxes
I've always thought the Don't Buy Her Flowers gift boxes were a brilliant idea, so I'm very excited that Conversations on Love is now available to buy as part of a care package! There are some really thoughtful options for bespoke care packages, from bereavement gifts to new parent presents and thank yous. Or any reason at all.
*No one talks about this stuff by Kat Brown
Journalist Kat Brown is creating this book to share people's stories of infertility and loss, to reduce the stigma. It will feature 15 writers on their experience of infertility, childlessness, baby loss and almost motherhood, and you can support the project here. I'm so happy to see more writing on these topics.
*I Have Just Said by Mary Oliver
I was recently asked to pick a favourite love poem, and remembered this one, which I chose as a reading on our wedding day. I think it captures both the scale and the detail of love, and reading it always fills me with a happy-sad sort of contentment. I hope it makes you smile too.
*And finally...
The Conversations on Love paperback is now out in the world! If you enjoy this newsletter but haven't read it yet, or you have and want to share it with a friend, you can buy it here. If you did enjoy it, I'd also be so grateful if you could leave a review on Amazon. I know it's a pain, but reviews are a HUGE help to authors on there and I appreciate every one.
As always, thank you for reading.
I'm wishing you love in unexpected places this Spring!
Natasha x
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Every day we think about love, and every day love eludes us. Maybe you’re hoping to begin a new relationship, or in a secret place in your heart, gathering the courage to leave one. Maybe you’re in a long-term partnership, wondering how to sustain love through life’s many storms. Maybe you’re a parent and you want to be a better one; or you’ve lost a parent, and that loss suddenly dwarfs everything else. After years of interviewing people about their relationships, Natasha Lunn learnt that these daily questions about love are often rooted in three bigger ones: How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it? Interviewing authors and experts as well as drawing on her own experience, she guides us through the complexities of these three questions. The result is a book to learn from, to lose and find yourself in. Above all, Conversations on Love will remind you that love is fragile, sturdy, mundane, beautiful; a thing always worth fighting for.
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