Conversations on Love: with Philippa Perry, Dolly Alderton, Roxane Gay, Stephen Grosz, Esther Perel, and many more

The search for any kind of love, I now believe, is a continual process of looking in and out. Looking inwards to understand yourself, to be curious about your needs and desires and gifts and flaws, to develop generosity and self-compassion. Then looking outwards to use the power those things give you to love other people, and the life you are livin

patient to speak from the heart. The process has been described as one person speaking, two people listening – the psychoanalyst listens for the unheard, the disregarded, the ignored fact, thought or feeling. Understanding the ‘thing beneath notice’ helps.

We need to stop tying ourselves so narrowly to this punitive vision that we’ve got to date in our twenties, find the ideal partner by twenty-eight, and have our first child at thirty-one, otherwise our life will be miserable.

Arguing itself is not the problem, it’s the attitude to arguing that can be the real issue.

Alain convinced me that searching for love from a place of fear was not a good beginning to any love story. It meant motivations were often selfish – to avoid loneliness; to outsource happiness – and would lead in the wrong direction. As the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote, ‘If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it.’

I wondered if the ugliest shade of unhappiness comes, not directly from what you lack, but from

There are plenty of moments when we are in solitude, connected to nature or purpose or meaning, and we don’t feel lonely. There are also plenty when we are with other people and are what Vivek calls ‘emotionally alone’, as I had felt in former relationships.

yourself and each other; and it takes effort and a

far down the line. It hasn’t always been this way: in early-nineteenth-century Germany having a good friend was seen as more important than having a lover, and much closer to the roots of happiness.