Love

This article first appeared in The Eye, October 1999

At a recent wedding of an old and dear friend I had to give a speech. What to say? Too easy, I thought, to tell bad jokes at my girlfriend's expense. But I felt a certain obligation to break the tradition of only the best man telling raunchy stories and threw in a couple of sexy anecdotes. But, more surprisingly, I found myself getting very impassioned on a subject on which I haven't had much recent experience - long term relationships.

I talked of the hollowness of protestations about sexual freedom. (You know the routine: "I need more space".) Warming to my speech and an attentive audience I opined that sleeping around and having fun is easy. Falling in love and staying there is hard. Love and marriage, I told this room of wall-to wall couples, is the true adventure. That is what takes tenacity and persistence and bravery.

As I sat down I wondered what had overtaken me - the megalomania that come with a captive audience, or had I meant what I said? Certainly I seemed to be spinning the conservative line for which I had once held a certain amount of contempt. On reflection though, I think that I meant it: that loving properly, and staying in a relationship is probably one of the hardest things any of us will ever do. Most of us will try and fail. At least once . . .

If you consider the hugely popular TV series Ally Mcbeal as any kind of measuring stick you'd probably decide a lot of us have lost the plot. The show is obsessed with love, but no-one finds it and no-one seems to know what it means. One typical episode revolved around a man suing his wife for fraud because while she loved him she wasn't 'in love' with him. Ally herself came close to a nervous breakdown contemplating the awful possibility that partnerships may be based on mutual respect and companionship rather than PASSION.

There is a bizarre contradiction in the fact that most of us pin our hopes on the unknown, on the person around the corner, rather than the people we already have in our life, and then try and build certainty and stability around this fantasy. It is all the more contradictory because most of the time we live in a society intent on eliminating risks: of untimely death, of physical injury, of financial loss. We try to figure out what relationships and love and sex means and buoy ourselves up with hope that Mr or Ms Right exists and will turn up on time. Papers and magazines tell us about research into pheromones, hormones, and seratonin (a low count of which apparently makes it harder for people to commit), blue prints laid down by parental role models and the gap distance between eyebrows. We - okay I do, anyway - go straight to the horoscope in the paper to get our daily dose of good news. When it's bad news we decide we never believed in that crap anyway.

But it seems to me that the risk, and pain, is not in 'falling' in love (those brain chemicals at work) but being brave enough to stay there and not run away when it gets difficult. And it always gets difficult when we stop running towards, or away from someone. In the stillness that comes with this we often find ourselves a lot closer to ourselves than is comfortable. It is often not the other person that drives us away but the confrontation with ourselves. To cope with this many of us develop a disastrous kind of risk minimization strategy which involves falling for someone who can't love back, or is a long way away or is too self-absorbed to really notice we are there. Or we chase edgy sexualities where risk and pain are part of desire but in a way that feels containable.

But we can't avoid pain, nor should we want to - to do so infantalises us. One way toddlers learn is by falling over and hurting themselves: it's how they develop mastery over their world. This fantasy that we can live in a world free of pain (or the pain that comes from boredom) seems to increase as there is a shift away from the traditional contractual arrangement of relationships towards more emotional issues. We expect more these days - a kind of perfection that rarely exists.

We seem to have the feeling that we have a RIGHT to a great romantic passion that turns into a long-term partnership. Like there should be some kind of guarantee that a culture which provides us with food and cars and designer clothes should also provide for our emotional well being. You know what I mean - the perfect man/woman, parent, child and job.

Loving properly, and staying in a relationship is something I did with ease when younger, but as I have got older I seem to have lost the knack. What gives me hope is other kinds of relationship: the ones we don't seem to obsess about, despite how crucial they are to our lives: friendships. I have remarkable friendships which have lasted many years, many betrayals and dramas. I have got friendship right. I look at the intimacy, conversation and joy my friendships have brought me, and I take pleasure in their constancy. My friendships, not my romances, have led me to understand what love is.

Love

People (okay, me and the people I know) talk and think about love, about relationships for most of their teens and twenties. Some get a bit bored by the subject by the time they are in their thirties, while some never cease to chew away on the subject like a dog with an old bone. If you used the high-rating television show Ally Mcbeal as any kind of measuring stick you'd probably decide we'd totally lost the plot. One recent episode revolved around a man suing his wife for fraud because while she loved him she wasn't 'in love' with him. Ally herself came close to a nervous breakdown contemplating the awful possibility that partnerships may be based on mutual respect and companionship rather than PASSION.

We live in a society where we are trying to eliminate risks: of untimely death, of physical injury, of a broken heart. We try and figure out what relationships and love and sex means by talking about pheromones, hormones, seratonin, the distance between people's eyebrows and blue prints laid down by parental role models. This kind of talk can occasionally be useful but doesn't really change much. And sure, training ourselves to avoid things like domestic violence and STD's (disease and debt) makes sense. But you can't avoid all pain, nor should we want to - to do so infantalises us. Think of current debates about childrearing. Falling over, hurting themselves is part of the way toddlers learn, how they develop mastery over their world. Yet it is something parents spend much of their time trying to protect their children from and as adults we try and protect ourselves from.

Falling in love is a risk. Maybe the biggest risk of all. It is something we are not very good at doing and many of us develop a disastrous kind of risk minimization strategy which involves falling for someone who can't love back, or is a long way away or is too self-absorbed to really notice we are there. Or we chase edgy sexualities where risk and pain are part of desire but in a way that feels containable ( They'll stop before they pull that cord around our neck TOO tight.).

I am loath to make dramatic statements about this general 'Love Anxiety" (this is jargon making on the run) reaching epidemic proportions in western culture as we reach the end of the century. Exciting and entrancing as such pronouncements are to make. Actually, I suspect that this love as madness has been around forever. But perhaps what is more recent is a shift in economic relationships, which shifts the focus to more emotional issues within relationships. And perhaps what is more recent is a feeling that we have a right to a great romantic passion which turns into a long-term partnership. Like there should be some kind of guarantee that a culture which can provide for us well materially, relatively speaking should also provide for our emotional well being. Rather than us acknowledging that relationships can be boring, often banal and bloody hard work.

At a wedding of an old and dear friend recently I had to give a speech. What to say? Too easy, I thought to tell bad jokes at my girlfriend's expense though I felt a certain obligation to break the tradition of only the best man telling raunchy stories and threw in a couple of sexy stories just to keep my side up. But more surprisingly I found my self getting very impassioned on a subject on which I haven't had much recent experience - long term relationships. I talked of the hollowness of protestations about sexual freedom (You know the routine: "I need more space") Warming to my speech and an attentive audience I opined that sleeping around and having fun is easy. Falling in love and staying there is hard. Love and marriage I said, to this crowded room, wall-to wall with couples, is the true adventure. That is what takes tenacity and persistence and bravery.

As I sat down I wondered what had overtaken me - the megalomania that comes with a captive audience, or had I meant what I said? On reflection, I think that I did mean what I said. I think that loving properly, and staying in a relationship is probably one of the hardest things any of us will ever do. Most of us will try and fail.

It is something I had done with ease once when younger, and hadn't been trying too hard, but seemed to have lost the knack of. If I didn't have remarkable friendships which have lasted years, betrayals and dramas I would doubt that I was ever going to get it right. But when I look at my friendships and the intimacy, conversation and joy they have bought me, at their constancy, I realise I am in there with a chance. It is through my friendships, not my romances that I have actually understood what love is. Our culture separates the two, but it shouldn't. It talks about sex as if it is that the definer of romantic relationships but everyone who is in a long-term relationship knows that is not the case.

Needs a bit more here, chong, but I want to talk to you first.

Walking along the beachfront at Bronte today, I saw some graffiti. "Love if you can". Scrawled underneath someone had written: "I'm trying".

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