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

two types of suffering: the pain we feel from experiencing loss and the pain we can inflict upon ourselves if we get stuck in a self-pitying

intimate ones – is an unconscious negotiation around that balance between ‘I’ and ‘we’. Sometimes both or one of you needs to say ‘I’. But if you’re only ever saying ‘I’, then you don’t have a relationship.

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 them; there’s pain and joy on each side of the ledger. So don’t stick rigidly to one story about what your lif

Susan pointed out a useful contradiction in love: if you lose a sense of yourself as an individual it can damage a relationship, but if you can’t accept that your needs and wants are not the only story, then it will be difficult to understand your partner’s perspective.

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.

wanting a different life to the one you’re living.

We spend our whole lives trying to meet targets set by someone else. We lose sight of who we are, because we’re so busy chasing external things. In love that means people search for what’s outside of them (a romantic partner) and lose sight of what’s inside them (a potential for self-development and understanding).

And by never forgetting that not knowing what will happen next also means that anything could.

To be calmer about the whole process.