Is Love Really a Losing Game?

When did love become so complicated? I know, it’s a cliché question. It seems like we’re always talking about the ups and downs of love, something that feels like it should be quite straightforward. But it never is. Love feels tarred and marred with uncertainty, with missteps, with a kind of quiet trickery that sneaks up on you when you least expect it.

Over the past few months, maybe more, I have found myself in some really interesting conversations with people, mostly close friends. We've delved into the topic of love, companionship, relationships, and where we all sit in the grand scheme of things. Approaching forty, the landscape looks mixed. Lots of my friends are coupled up. Lots of them are not. Some have been partnered for a very long time and are genuinely happy. Some are quietly not. And all of it exists side by side.

In all my conversations, love feels like a complicated road, a sort of byzantine labyrinth. I can’t even begin to define it properly because it’s so deeply layered, nuanced and different for all of us. But if I were to try, for me, love looks like peace. It is the presence of someone who settles your nervous system rather than dysregulates. Someone who sees you deeply, who acknowledges all of you: the soft parts and the sharp edges; the quirks and the kinks. Someone who doesn’t just see those things, but likes, nurtures and protects them.

And love is about desire. I don’t think we talk enough about desire when we talk about love. The kind of love I value is inseparable from desire. Desire that sits beyond the platonic. Desire that is all encompassing: physical, sexual, emotional. Desire that makes you want someone’s presence above all others. That matters. I think we often understate how important it is; we reframe it as something shallow or secondary, when actually it is fundamental. I think of desire as the pursuit of pleasure with one person. I call it a pursuit intentionally, because it should never really end. The hunger to meet and satisfy the needs of your lover should feel like a lifelong endeavour. One which you welcome, of course.

What I'm going to say next may not be well received, and I'm not expecting everyone to agree, but I think men are often misrepresented when we talk about love. Their emotional worlds are flattened or disregarded. Which I think is made even more apparent in the midst of all this talk about a male loneliness epidemic, as there is so little real listening. A close male friend of mine went through a terrible breakup last year. He was extremely vulnerable and open about his failings in the relationship. And bravely he expressed his desperate desire for love and shared intimacy. Sitting with him, unpacking what that meant to him, was quietly startling. His longings sounded so familiar. So similar to the conversations I have with my girlfriends. The same fears. The same hopes. The same confusion.

And if we are all saying such similar things, why does it feel so hard? Why is it so difficult to bridge the gap between the sexes and build relationships that thrive rather than endure? Because endurance seems to sit at the centre of so many love stories. People enduring situations they have outgrown. Enduring silence. Enduring disappointment. Enduring a low level of fulfilment because they believe that is what love requires. That love is something you eventually tolerate rather than something that actively feeds you.

I don’t really know where I am going with this. I just know that love feels desperately difficult. And I think many of us struggle to articulate what we actually want from it, what we need from it, what we are willing to give. And whether what we are receiving is enough.

Maybe the complication of love is not love itself, but our fear of asking for what we truly desire. Because if that person you claim to love cannot meet your deepest desires, then what happens next?