005. The Love Gaze

different forms of love, reflections on love in adulthood and book recommendations

As children we are taught to fear strangers, to look out for the unknown, to keep our eyes on the unfamiliar. But more often than not, the ones we fear the most and the ones most likely to do us harm are the ones closest to us.

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If I think back to my younger 13-year-old self, I felt like I was waking up every day having been introduced to the tragedies and comedies of life. The what-not-to-do’s, the achievements, and the confined space to which every day seemed like a haphazard compilation of love, loss, failure and art.

Remember the first time you fell in love?

That spectatorialish gaze and the daydreams.

This sort of enchanted concept that would take us to new emotional heights and elusive lows.

Love at first sight.

The butterflies that at one point I dismissed as a fundamental flaw in the concept of love – then again, was I just skeptical because I wasn’t in a relationship that was inherently stable? Perhaps.(refer to my prev. post on love for all the gory details - PSA, it’s the expose on the toxic ex y’all have been wanting to read for a while)…

I remember running around the rectangular wooden sandbox in kindergarten chasing after a boy that would soon also find himself at my primary school and then at the boy’s college round the corner for Intermediate. It was one of those things where our parents lived within the proximity of locals built on highlighting the compatibilities of personalities – ‘oh she likes to read too!’, ‘his parents are nice, what is he up to today?’. As a shy young girl, I hated these comments. I felt like I was slipping into a cave smothered in superficial attraction and meddling neighbors. So, you can only imagine that my safe space was to avoid him at all costs – I’m sure he cringed about it all too. We never talked about it, but it seemed to be a general look of understanding of a ‘love that most certainly won’t blossom’ due to unstable meddling.

Being single then sucked and being single in my early thirties also sucked. I couldn’t do the romantic movies, the constant third-wheeling and the look of dismay when I found out I was going to a gig with other couples only to wish someone would hold me from behind. There was a period where I couldn’t watch the ending of rom-com’s because I knew they were going to end happy and somehow my own experiences of love seemed to overshadow any ounce of joy I would witness even on the faces of fictional characters in a film. I was sour and I was restless. Perhaps this early childhood meddling left me with a taste of the sour and a heart scorned is a heart carefully guarded.

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I guess growing up in a Westernized country and coming from a background of Asian descent, my parents never uttered the words ‘I Love You’ on a regular basis. Sure, I knew they LOVED me, but there was always this fleeting moment where I would go over to a friend’s place and be awfully aware of how this was barely shown when another parent would pull their child into a tight embrace as they were leaving for school. Fast forward a few years later, and I would come to realize that love for them has always been culturally shared through the cooking of food - I always knew my parents loved cooking, I just never explicitly knew that this was how they were showing ME love. It’s funny what you encounter when you get older. The books on love dissecting every aspect, and every facet that consequently leaves you staring at a wall saying ‘oh, now I see’.

I found myself fearing the unknown, longing for genuine connection and a relationship that would thrive. Is it any wonder that the 80’s and 90’s served rom-com’s that followed that ‘Head Over Heels’ formula? – fleeting moments of infatuation thrown into a pool of accidental compatibility. It continued to serve as a poignant reminder that there were plenty of fish in the sea, but when you’ve been burned too many times, that term just fails irrespective of how the Hollywood scenes depicted it should be. Having to protect yourself from the person you willingly let in. A crack in the formula.

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One minute I was being embraced by my other half listening to the concrete crunch beneath our footsteps; the next, I was throwing everything into the boot of my car as tears streamed down my face. Paralyzed by hope and fear, I wanted that same feeling of the initial embrace back in my life again. I wanted to be sought after. To have that almost decade-long relationship matter. I was stubborn. And I hated the fact that I was told that they loved me so much that they had to set me free. It was a total copout.  

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What motivates us to love now and to love so deeply?

How do we love? And do we love with intention?

I sometimes feel myself spending hours recalling those moments where that sense of romanticism made me feel safe. Wanted. I have that now - this sense of want that seems to now float in this aura - I feel wanted and respected and loved. I was talking to a friend the other day and even saying it out loud made me cringe that I even allowed such toxicity in my life but I mentioned the fact that my boyfriend Sam exhibits the very love languages that I didn’t know I even deserved - flowers, hugs, compromising, back of the lungs visceral laughter. Lazy dinners, beach walks, random jaunts to bookshops. The simple things that in a previous relationship, I would have been met with scorn and a frown. There were deep wounds and there were tears. Sinking stomach aches are now replaced with this sort of happiness that I haven’t experienced ever and it leaves me in awe. Giddy. Unbalanced. Spontaneous.

Sam & Henry / photo taken by me

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Things aren’t the same as they once were, and things will never be the same now. Instead, I am but floating blissfully in the unfamiliar. Happiness unearthed.

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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS ON LOVE

1. Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

Omg this book is everything you need and more covering all forms of love: after years of feeling that love was always out of reach, journalist Natasha Lunn set out to understand how relationships work and evolve over a lifetime. Turning to authors and experts on the very topic, Lunn sets out to understand all forms and in particular the questions that haunt us day to day: How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?

From Dolly Alderton to Lisa Taddeo to Alain de Botton and Roxane Gay, this collection provides all the viewpoints you could ever need to cover all facets of a concept sometimes so hard to define.

2. Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord

Wow, talk about a book that absolutely revolutionized my thoughts on my ex and the book that revealed his toxicity in all its glory. If you were after a slap in the face and a wake up call, then this book is for you. Lord, Vogue’s Dating Columnist writes the most unflinching story of what its like to heel from a broken heart - its exactly what the reviews say: its a love story told in reverse and the unravelling of a relationship that all of us gals have encountered in one way or another.

3. All About Love / New Visions by bell hooks

Thirteen chapters that cover all aspects of love in modern society and I mean, ALL - from what it means to give and receive love from childhood to community and the ties between love and loss that have us challenging what it means to fall in love and the romantic preconceptions that seem to shape our ideals of love. We heal and we fight through it all and hooks covers all this and more in each chapter.

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For now, hope y’all like the book recs and drop in more in the comments because she’s a nosy gal. x