Are you in love?

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It’s also four months — give or take a couple of days — since I broke up with my boyfriend of five years, and the first time I’ve been single on the 14th of February in almost a decade. Each of these facts means something — though I’m not quite sure what, exactly.

Jamie and I met at the tail-end of my relationship with my first boyfriend — a period of me being perpetually messy-drunk. I took him to walk my dog when I was absolutely plastered during the middle of the day, and demanded he hold my hand throughout. I dragged him out to dinner with mutual friends and attempted to feed him pâté and vegetables while swigging wine from the bottle. I tried his glasses on and asked him if I resembled “A sexy secretary” — his answer? Just “A secretary.”

Finally, we kissed at a Halloween party — I was dressed as Mia Wallace and him, a priest. We were doomed. And sure enough, a month later, I got back with my boyfriend. But not before I’d exchanged numbers with Jamie. I ended up saving him to my phone as ‘Nan’, but the truth was glaring; each buzz of my phone inspired an accusatory “Your Nan has texted you again” from my boyfriend. This went on for a year. I’d go on long walks with Jamie, tweet the lyrics of our mutual favourite band on purpose, and jump out of bed and do my make-up to pretend I was just ‘around’ when I went to meet him at parties at 12am. Then I moved to university, broke up with my boyfriend, and asked Jamie out.

Jamie visited me in Newcastle on Valentine’s Day in 2015. We went to the beach and ate chips, clung to each other while walking on sea-washed, slippery rocks, and got drunk on sickly-sweet rosé. I don’t remember what we did in 2016, 2017, 2018, or even 2019. When you’re with someone for so long, significant things become less so, and mundanities become extraordinary.

Remnants of our relationship include a piece of wrapping paper Jamie wrote on the back of for our first Christmas when he was too skint to get me a card. A packed lunch he once drunkenly assembled for me — consisting primarily of Parma Violets and Swizzle Sticks. The way our hands always found one another’s in a darkened cinema screen, or under the table in a bar. Enduring lukewarm showers with random scalding bursts because we couldn’t agree on a temperature together. Pissing ourselves laughing at a takeaway server shouting “The fork is finished!" by way of saying that they’d ran out of forks. Leaving one another half-made coffees before work so the other could roll out of bed and just boil the kettle. A Valentine’s Card I designed on the back of a cereal box when we first moved in together and I was too skint to buy one.

When Jamie and I broke up, it wasn’t a clean-cut, straight-down-the-middle split. There were tons of tiny fractures. Jamie raising doubts and me throwing my hands up in the air. Me walking away, all the while willing him to work harder at things. Both of us promising a last kiss and a last “I love you”, and never keeping the promises. Jamie asking if we could see other people but still see each other. Me finally accepting it was over. Jamie saying “I’m in. I’m all in”, beckoning me right back. In the throes of it all, I read a re-circulated interview with Esther Perel in The New Yorker, and clung to her beautiful, honest definition of love: ‘It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings — positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones […] It’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm.’

From my own experience, love is never 50/50. Jamie and I had been together since I was 19. I’d had one other serious relationship and I’d slept with other people — it wasn’t as if this was my first and only romantic experience — but I hadn’t really ever been single. I lived vicariously through my friends’ tales of vodka-fuelled kisses on dimly-lit dancefloors, and taxis from Manchester to Burnley for the sake of a shag. I let people flirt with me and remembered what it was like to anticipate something, rather than know it’s waiting at home for you in the form of a cup of tea or note on the fridge. I pondered the possibility of waking up in sheets that weren’t my own, next to someone I barely knew. Ultimately, what I was thinking was, “Will I regret this commitment in ten — maybe fifteen — years? Is this a pivotal moment of my youth I’m missing out on?” From a writer’s perspective — a small, selfish part of me even considered ‘“Is this the last great love that’ll ever inspire me? What if I never experience another heartbreak to cash in as creative currency?” What can I say? I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan, I’m hugely grateful for Phil Collins’ various marital breakdowns and the subsequent gift that was ‘No Jacket Required’, and I think Kanye West's ‘Love Lockdown’ is a timeless banger.

Unsurprisingly, when heartbreak rocks up at your door, she’s not laden with a typewriter and reams of paper. She doesn’t call ahead so you know to put wine in the fridge and make sure the glasses are washed. Quite the opposite — she lets herself in and kicks back on the sofa, leaving you to hastily toss together too-strong servings of gin mixed with probably-flat tonic water, all the while eyeing up her carry-on and wondering if it’s going to be a long visit. As a hopeless romantic, I’m a textbook dumpee. I listened to ABBA’s ‘The Winner Takes It All’ on an endless loop. My weeping on public transport drove a random stranger to donate his entire pack of tissues to me (I still worry about whether or not I should’ve taken one tissue and returned the rest. If you’re reading this, tissue philanthropist, drop me an email). I went straight from work to Wetherspoon’s and ordered endless streams of pints to my table via the app. I sat in the courtyard of our flat and chain-smoked in the manner of a French widow. I crossed roads recklessly and wondered if Jamie would visit me if I ended up horizontal on a ward somewhere. I did heartbreak to death.

But like all those who persistently pin their hearts to their sleeves with staples, Sellotape, worn iron-on fabric patches, and the rest, I’m an enormous cliché. As desperate as I was to fling myself over the heartbreak cliff and into the tempestuous waves of despair below, each time I tried, I was gently pulled back from the edge and guided to level ground.

Subsequently, while grappling with the loss of romantic, all-consuming, obsessive love, I fell hard and fast for a different kind. Patient love that answered 4am semi-coherent phone calls. Love without question that agreed to come over and lay next to me in bed, if only to make the threat of yet another sleepless night a little less daunting. Love that didn’t complain when I interrogated all the same events, quarrels, and text messages, and instead met me with measured advice each time. Considerate love that held its tongue with softness, not yet willing to tell me hard facts that I wasn’t ready to hear. Borrowed pyjamas and blow-up camp beds. An endless stream of hot tea, wine, water, and gin, depending on the needs of the moment. A cult-like ring-a-roses sing-a-long to Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’ in the Thompson’s Arms. A stern tone scolding me for having Jacob’s crackers and cream cheese for lunch again. Bowls of homemade pasta, and hearty curries with two different types of bread. A book for exactly how I was feeling, and another one to help me forget. Car journeys spent wailing to Alanis Morrissette’s ‘Jagged Little Pill’ in its entirety at full volume. Random chocolate bars brought back from the shop. Cans of Coke to quell my permanent hangover. Shared rouges, kohl pencils, and eyeshadows, and gentle hands that painted my face into someone new when I was at a loss with my reflection. Album recommendations — ones to wallow in and ones to avoid. Listening to Bright Eyes’ ‘Landlocked Blues’ in unison through separate pairs of headphones. Entire days spent under blankets on the sofa, watching shite TV and sharing comfortable silences.

Predominantly, in films and in fairy-tales, love is presented to us as passion and fury. It’s the heroine frantically running through the airport to beg her sweetheart not to board the plane, the heart-throb’s serenade — boombox atop his shoulder — in a suburban street, the prince scaling an impossibly tall tower to rescue his fair maiden. It’s “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird”, “I wish I knew how to quit you”, and “I’ll never let go”. But when the credits stop rolling or the last page is turned, this isn’t always the love that endures. Sometimes, it’s replaced with empty whisky bottles and sour breath. A tongue down someone else’s throat. Smashed crockery. A punched hole through drywall. A sprawling empty side of a shared bed. Bills to divide. Cold, clinical text messages; and deathly silence. From childhood, we spend our entire lives looking for this love — first inserting ourselves into storybooks, and then pressing our love into folded notes passed across classrooms. We plan futures with unattainable celebrity crushes and build Pinterest boards with unaffordable couture gowns. We listen to entire albums through the lens of desiring someone who doesn’t know we exist, and attach hopeless meaning to precious moments entirely of our own design – a certain choice of words or lingering glance. We lie awake by blue digital light, texting romantic love until the early hours. We chase it down the street, screaming and begging it to stay, and pound balled fists against locked doors, hoping it'll answer. We cut our hair and change the colour, and get tattoos of romantic love's name. We spend romantic love on plane tickets and follow it to foreign countries with no contingency plan.

Ultimately, romantic love is one defined by risk. It's a blind leap of faith into the outstretched arms of someone who's promised to catch us. And letting ourselves fall? It's joyous. Exhilarating. It makes your heart race and time stop all at once. It's one of the only things actually worth losing sleep over. Even when it doesn't end the way we hoped or even expected, we find ourselves frantically diving right back in.

But the best kind of love? It's sturdy and unfaltering. It won't ever expect you to change your hair, but it will tell you when your new haircut looks shite. There won't necessarily be candlelit dinners and walks on the beach, but the reasonably-priced Aldi wine will flow without judgement, and this love will stumble home with you and lend you make-up remover. This love will subconsciously learn exactly how you take your tea and toast your crumpets, and bring both of them to you when you're hungover on the sofa. It knows precisely when you need to be buoyed by a list of all your best traits, and when you need a reality check on some of your worst. It's fierce, bristles when someone catcalls you, and it'll threaten to kick the shins of the boy who broke your heart. It's generous, and lets you have the last slice of cake while picking up your coffee tab when you're waiting on payday. Often, it's wordless, allowing for entire conversations to pass via a hand on your arm, or eyes met across a room. It's not a lifeboat, but rather a canoe — an unspoken agreement to guide, balance, and support one another through still waters and unpredictable currents. It'll make you feel strong, capable, worthy, and safe. Invest in it. Stop treating it like a stopgap while you wait for the main event. This is the main event. To draw on the wisdom of my idol, therapist, and soul-sister, Samantha Jones: "The right guy is an illusion. Start living your lives".