Should we talk about love?

If you’re a boy, scram. If you’re one of my friends, I love you, tell me every single one of your thoughts about this! And to the rest of you, thank you for reading :)

So 2025 was a bit of a clusterfuck. Why bother sugarcoating. Naturally, I have spent a shit ton of my time buried in books, movies, and music. Most of it romantic, so trust me when I say I know a thing or two about love. It is my favourite thing in the world. It is what I always turn to (and sometimes run from), so I sort of made it my mission this summer to try to understand it.

What sparked this side quest was another dreadful morning at the office running the same Excel reports I had for the past two years, on autopilot with my headsets blasting The Tortured Poets Department (I might be a bit dramatic). It was the first time I really heard the song Peter. Enveloped with haunting harmonies, Taylor Swift used the fairytale as an allegory for her ill-fated on-again, off-again, decade-long fling with Matty Healy (ew). About how she tried to change the ending, Peter losing Wendy.

Wanting to be wanted isn’t particularly a new theme in Swift’s catalogue. The part I found baffling was that this whole situation unravelled in the middle of The Eras Tour. She was up on that stage performing to upwards of seventy thousand fans every weekend. People who gave an arm and a leg to afford those tickets because of how much she means to them. Multiple times sometimes (guilty). How can you be one of the most beloved women in the world yet still not feel loved? Be in despair because that love is not from the one person you want it from? Why do we do that? What is it about love withheld that makes us want it more?

Is it really love if it comes with terms and conditions? What the hell is even love? I didn’t particularly like any of Google’s definitions for it, so I called my friends in for jury duty. With a vast array of responses, ranging from how they presented in love to how they hoped to receive it, including a couple of Bible verses, I really enjoyed observing their approach to the question. Ask your friends what they think love is! One of my favourites being: I don’t really know, but I know I love my mum, and it didn’t feel like home one time when I came back to visit and she wasn’t there.

As someone with a rather complicated relationship with both home and my mother (we will get into it another day), I would still agree. Love is the place that feels like home. Home is where the heart is. Mine stays scattered across oceans, in jagged fragments stained by nostalgia.

Love is supposed to be the ultimate form of positive connection, irrespective of whether it is with your parents, career, friends, or partner. We seek validation, academic or romantic, because it often becomes a means for us to assess our self-worth. To be the smartest, the funniest, or the prettiest person makes you valuable. And that is what we want, right? To be validated and valued? We are all entitled to love, every single one of us. Therefore, love isn’t something that should be earned, so why is it that sometimes we chase it?

We love people and we love things for a reason. It is never unconditional (and that is okay). Usually it is because of how they make us feel. Whether it is a sport, a best friend, or the notifications on your phone from a new (sometimes old) character that has just (re)entered your consciousness. One of my friends described love as the best and the worst feeling, that it was painful and pleasurable (no, I don’t think he was trying to quote PILLOWTALK). I understand loving someone so much that you want to swap their pain for yours, but is that truly sustainable? I don’t think so.

We romanticise misery and tragedy a lot. Romeo + Juliet, Veer Zaara, even La La fucking Land. When not embroiled in tragedy, we are obsessed with the most toxic push and pull with the worst characters. It can’t ever be that easy, “true love” is worth all the sacrifices, or at least that is what we’ve been taught. And I fundamentally reject the mindset that love should be painful or demand you discard parts of yourself to have it.

That was my issue. The combination of a general disregard for the male population and the lack of positive representation of romantic relationships in real life, I had always felt threatened by the prospect of a boyfriend. And this was before Vogue called it embarrassing to have one! I have seen strong, independent women in my life have the light snuffed out of their eyes in long-term partnerships. No one forced them into it, they were willing participants. But women are expected (and encouraged) to prioritise their families and children over their hopes and dreams much more than men have. That just never sat right with me. It threatened my independence, so of course I felt compelled to violently reject it.

Sure, some women dream of getting married and raising children. That was never me. I wanted to work in finance (would not recommend) and live in my big-girl apartment (would absolutely recommend). For the record, you can have both a career and a family all at once. The point I am making is it was never on my radar. Boys were always just a shameful indulgence to be sought out in secret whenever I required distraction. Until I needed to be distracted from them. A vicious cycle of self-abandonment I practised to prove why boys were a bad idea.

My first ever “heartbreak” wasn’t much more than a really bad case of limerence. He sort of snuck up on me, and I didn’t hate him for it. A man who texted in full sentences and proper grammar after growing up in a sea of WYD warriors? I was bewitched! The bar was in hell, and I was a child. I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I had to try and hold on to him (at a distance, of course) because he felt like the only tolerable one.

When that ended, my dad was kicked out of his bed for a bit, because I am dramatic and my reaction to any minor inconvenience is to run to my mum. It felt like the end of the world as I knew it. Funny, because the woes from my first “heartbreak” don’t even scratch the surface of the wounds I have carried my whole life. My heart is bubble-wrapped in scar tissue.

I think my first actual heartbreak was probably the first time I was reprimanded for something that wasn’t my fault, or when I became an unintended casualty of my mother’s hysteria, or perhaps when my childhood best friend traded Disney princesses for Winx Club when I was eight and found other friends. I have never sat and thought about it until now, but those moments were probably more formative in shaping my resistance to love than my “first” heartbreak.

If anything, that was such a magnificent catalyst for self-discovery and growth that I am not even mad about it, or at him. It was insane. Had I known what was to transpire, I would have tread far more carefully. I had no idea what on earth was going on. I was a baby with all these big, unexplained new feelings I had no idea how to navigate, and most of it had nothing to do with him.

It also had very little to do with love. Love is something that requires you to be extremely vulnerable. To tell someone the truth about exactly what you want without the guarantee of reciprocity is a lot scarier than being naked with them. It is even scarier to allow yourself to admit what you want. I was never seeking love, God forbid. That scared the living daylights out of me. Why would I willingly stick my finger in a Venus flytrap?

It is so weird, because I LOVE LOVE. I think one of the purest forms of love you can experience is that with a friend. This random stranger you’re not tied to by blood or lust who chooses to show up for you because of you! It might just be that I have really cool friends. I am in constant awe of them. Their opinions, their compassion, their humour! I love that I get to be in their lives, and I don’t ever take it for granted.

I went through a devastating friendship breakup last year. Nothing I ever go through with a boy will ever crush me like walking away from a person I considered a sister. I had thought we were on our Meredith and Christina shit for real. It had nothing to do with me, she let her own insecurities corrode one of the most special bonds either of us would ever experience in this lifetime. We operated with a level of cerebral synchronicity I won’t ever share with another person. I will always miss her, and I am still mad at her whenever I want to tell her something and I can’t.

It doesn’t happen as often anymore, but sometimes I find myself wishing I could go back in time and have my best friend back. It is bittersweet, because I actually want nothing to do with the person she is today. I also do feel incredibly loved by the people in my life, it’s not that I don’t. I just miss my person, the version of her I remember in my memories sometimes. I don’t know her anymore. Nor do I wish to.

I just wish I could forget when it was magic. But no! Wait! I don’t! I wouldn’t let people get to know me, what was the point if it wasn’t going to be forever? But quite literally nothing is. Most of the love we experience in our lifetime is not permanent, nor is it meant to be. So you can’t let the fear of loss prevent you from experiencing love. You know what’s crazy? It’s not even a fear of loss. Sometimes people are just scared to be embarrassed. Like, what is the worst that’s going to happen? You are gonna get everything you want! You’re really gonna let your ego get in the way of the best things that can ever happen to you? Are you really that silly?

Love, for me when I was five, was unplugging the TV and sprinting away so my grandad would chase me like Tom did Jerry. Love is when you let your girlfriend talk about that god-awful man she should block for months on end. Love is the person you text when you have good news to share (she finally blocked him). Love is taking the long way home for five extra minutes together. Love is the person you call crying at three in the morning because you know they’ll pick up even if they are at a club. Love is the matching outfits you got to share with your favourite cousin. Love is rediscovering an old Taylor Swift song you finally understand because you’ve experienced it now!

We experience an incredible amount of love all the time. So it’s not really love you’re after when you hand over the reins of your mood to the notifications on your phone from that diva holding you emotionally hostage. As someone who has been on both ends of this dynamic, it is an ego thing. You are looking for validation. When you’re extremely picky and you’ve picked that one YOU put on a pedestal, he sort of becomes your religion. You worship the myth your mind creates of him. His assent means everything now, because somehow some deep childhood wound in your psyche has decided that is what will make you worthy.

We often confuse attention or attraction or affection for love. In those instances, we will let a boy, a friend, or even a parent get the better of us because we think they love us, even when any of their previous actions don’t match their words, and we’ll do almost anything to preserve their “love.” Even at our own detriment. In those moments where you abandon yourself for a sliver of their approval, you will be let down. Every time. The universe will course-correct you. Every time.

Eventually, the last straw will break. You won’t even want to do it anymore or explain why you were eating out of the trash in the first place. And it’s different this time. You aren't going back. You don’t want to blow up his phone. You don’t even want to have the last word (and you ALWAYS want to have the last word).

We weren’t taught how to love right. Love, given the society we live in, isn’t prioritised and therefore rarely understood. But it is the crux of human existence. It is irrational, unpredictable, and so important that the lack of it will have devastating consequences on the rest of your life. It starts when you are a child, on the school playground, around the dinner table, and before bedtime. The boys (or the girls) come much later, by then the damage has sort of been done already.

I have had so many different takes on what I thought love was in the months that it took me to write this. But I have settled on it being a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets, the better you get at it. There is not really a method or science behind the madness. The only way you can learn how to ride a bike is by riding it. You are going to fall, bruise yourself, maybe even break a leg. But you won’t know how to do it any other way. But you HAVE TO DO IT, there is no other way.

I will never be one to overshare on the internet, but fucking hell this year sucked. I don't remember most of it but it has been a purge of everything bad in my life. I felt let down a lot by friends, lovers, parents at various points. People who are supposed to choose me, love me, and have my back didn’t, at least not in the way I would have wanted them to. And it wasn’t the end of the world. I had to really evaluate which instances I was willing  to work through and which I had to shut the door on.

I don’t love any of them any less even if they don’t get to be active participants in my life. Love is never lost when perspective is earned! Love isn’t transactional. We can make it out to be sometimes because we derive our value from others’ reactions to us. And we gotta stop doing that! And we gotta stop eating out of the trash! There is literally so much love around us. We’ve gotta stop chasing it in places it doesn’t exist.

And you stop chasing it when you learn to start loving yourself. It’s incredibly hard. Why bother sugarcoating?

If you’ve made it this far, tell me what you think love is! I hope your 2025 was better than mine. Sorry if we haven’t caught up in a while, what have I missed? Tell me everything. I love you so dearly.

Merry Christmas (please do call) and Happy New Year. Enjoy the holidays and remember to love yourself xx