-Conversations on love by Natasha Lunn

Conversations on Love, Natasha Lunn

Natasha Lunn, from Conversations on Love (2021)

[Text ID: For years, I was committed to longing.]

what advice would you give someone who is struggling to create meaning in their life outside of a relationship?

figure out what you're looking for outside of yourself that you've not found within. are you looking for a relationship because you genuinely want one—or because you don't love yourself, and you think that if you meet someone who loves you, it will validate your self-worth?

sometimes people do get into a relationship to validate what they think they lack. a lot of it is self-interrogation. on the other hand, being contentedly single is a huge blessing; but you want to be sure that you're not making decisions out of apathy, or comfort, or fear.

we can be so cynical about love that sometimes i wonder whether we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. this idea of—i am using air quotes—'I am a strong independent woman who doesn't need a man—can also be dangerous, because being strong doesn't mean that you don't need people. we are not born to be alone—we need community, however, we choose to find it with a partner, friends, or family.

i think there's a danger of pulling away from love in order to own your feminism, when actually you learn to understand yourself in relation to people around you. you can find independence through connection too.

— Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

“But the truth of this life is that there's a lot of pain in it. There's more loss and grief than we want to believe. How we make peace with that is the journey we're all trying to figure out.”

—Natasha Lunn, Conversations on Love

“I learnt that the loneliest place of all is lying in bed at night next to someone who makes you feel small, with your back to theirs, still hoping they will turn over and put their arms around you.”

➳ monthly book round-up: september

read:

middlegame, seanan mcguire. 5*. read 27 august 2023 – 06 september 2023.

conversations on love, natasha lunn. 4*. read 31 august 2023 – 13 september 2023.

girl, woman, other, bernardine evaristo. 1*. read 16 september 2023 – 22 september 2023 [DNF].

the case of the disappearing duchess, nancy springer. 5*. read 19 september 2023 - 22 september 2023.

currently reading:

seasonal fears, seanan mcguire. started 08 september 2023.

noughts & crosses, malorie blackman. started 23 september 2023.

I wondered if the ugliest shade of unhappiness comes, not directly from what you lack, but from wanting a different life to the one you’re living.

- Natasha Lunn, Conversations on Love

<3

Natasha Lunn, from Conversations on Love (2021)

For a lot of my life I’ve had the sense that I wasn’t good enough or that I was better than everyone else — back and forth between inferiority and superiority

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

-Conversations on love by Natasha Lunn

No meaningful relationship can be consistently easy. Even the closest friends will neglect or misinterpret each other, say the wrong thing, feel rejected by change when different life stages pull them apart. The question, then, is not how to avoid these painful missteps, but how to keep trying to tell the truth to each other, regardless.

Natasha Lunn on Conversations on Love

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn; a reminder that love is conscious, and to love consciously

I just finished reading this book fifteen minutes ago and immediately had to write my thoughts down.

Nearing the end of the book, I felt this heavy sadness, almost as if a friend was about to leave after we had just spent a few hours talking together.

This book couldn’t have come to me at a better time. I think reading it helped me move through this very tough transitional phase of my life. My relationship with myself, a few of my friends, my parents and my sister has changed quite a lot over the past few months. And for the most part, I have honestly been unable to make sense of it.

Conversations of love is a compilation of many conversations the author has had with people at different points in their life, who had experienced love in so many of its forms. 

The author also opens up a lot about her own relationships, which is probably why it felt like talking to a friend. I felt very connected to this book because the subject matter was very personal, and the author was very vulnerable.

The book is split into three main sections; finding love, sustaining love and losing love. Within these broad themes are stories of people’s lives and their own retelling of how their experience of love shaped them into the people they are now.

I think different people will resonate with different parts of this book. For me, right now, I resonated the most with the grief of changing friendships. My sister also just moved away for the first time in her life, and I have been finding it very hard to process the fact that we no longer share a room and a life together. This book was of great comfort to me in that aspect, because it kept reminding me how lucky i am to still have her in this world, to be able to call her, to find parts of her in everything she left back here, to be able to connect in our shared interests. It made me realize that grief is, in a way, an expression of love.

Reading this book reminded me that I have forgotten to love consciously, and it made me realize why I should put more conscious effort into the present. I think I will probably reread it many times in the future. It seems like a book I would need to revisit again and again.

Took me a month to finish. I’m glad I took my time with processing as well as resting. I’m putting the entire Recommended Reading list in my TBR.

A celebration of love in all its forms, featuring conversations with: Philippa Perry on falling in love slowly * Candice Carty-Williams on friendship * Alain de Botton on the psychology of being alone * Dolly Alderton on vulnerability * Emily Nagoski on the science of sex * Diana Evans on parenthood * Lisa Taddeo on the loneliness of loss * Esther Perel on unrealistic expectations * Stephen Grosz on accepting change * Roxane Gay on redefining romance * and many more

What the Cornelia Street surprise song performance can teach us about love, Natasha Lunn

“The original ‘Cornelia Street’ asks this question: how can I find the courage to fall in love when I’m already terrified of losing it? But the Cornelia Street surprise song performance asks a more difficult one: how do you keep believing in love when you found that courage, and you lost it anyway?

I believe we find the answers in the performance itself. […] The force of this performance says, I’m not afraid to be wrong. I’m not embarrassed that I was brave enough to love and my worst fears came true. And even though they did, I’m still here, taking the pain I’m left with and turning it into something meaningful.”