Issue 21: The Long View of Love

Plus: a feel-good memoir, an honest dissection of marriage, and a lovely sipper

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Worth Considering: The Long View of Love

In my 20s, I envied the girls who were sent huge, beautiful bouquets of flowers on Valentine’s Day. The ones whose partners slaved over a homemade four-course dinner, complete with rich, chocolate mousse at the end. I’d take these displays of affection as invitations to measure the worth of my own relationship: did he love me enough to order the roses? What was the word count on the card he wrote me? Was the steak perfectly rare?

By my 30s, the strength of our bond was held up against (seemingly) more grown-up standards: did he want to move in together? Were we engaging in conversations that circled the topics of marriage and children?

At 37—having been through minor arguments, throw-down fights, a cross-country move, countless living spaces, shared rents and a mortgage, promotions and career changes, a soul-shattering separation and a fierce recommitment, a baby who somehow became a toddler—I see that the ways in which we traditionally measure a relationship provide no real prognosis of future success.

Now, I catalog the valleys of our marriage with as much weight as the peaks—sludging through the troughs, the lowest lows, to make our way back to each other. I earmark the heartfelt apologies, the white flags waved during battle, the forsaking of ego in favor of a shared vision. The softening of our edges, the inching towards growth. The moments, with tear-filled eyes, we remind one another that we still believe in our life together—even when the fog in front of us mars the road ahead. These, to me, signal something greater: the willingness to endure failures and pain and disappointment with the knowing that transformation and renewal awaits us on the other side.

I still think Valentine’s Day is a good excuse to make time for the people you love—romantic and otherwise—but I’ve stopped using the occasion to prove to anyone, and especially myself, that my partnership is a perfect one. Instead, I’ll carve out a few quiet minutes to reflect on where we’ve been and how far we come, and remind myself that the path we walk together will always be a winding one. If at the start of each morning and the end of each day we continue to choose each other, the flowers can remain on their stems and the steak can be charred and blackened; I have enough, and more.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and the many loves of your life, past and present: boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews. Best friends and colleagues and the barista who knows your coffee order. Your children, your godchildren, your friends’ children, your grandchildren. Pets, all the pets. And yourself—the one person we find any excuse not to love unconditionally, but who holds the key to our every happiness.

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Worth Watching: Modern Love - Amazon Prime

I know this is not new and many of you have probably already watched it, but it felt remiss not to include it in a Valentine’s Day-themed issue: the series, based on the NYT’s column of the same name, is comprised of just eight 30-minute episodes and covers the gamut of adoration, from an unexpected bond between doorman and resident to the quiet romance of late-in-life lovers—all of which will make you feel a little more tender towards the many amours of your own life.

Worth Reading: Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Bess Kalb

At its core, Kalb’s memoir is a love letter to her late grandmother—one that paid adoring tribute while also including her most human character flaws. It’s poignant and honest and quite funny (Kalb started her career in the writer’s room of Jimmy Kimmel); I left the book lamenting the fact that I never had the opportunity to know my own grandparents so intimately, while vowing to be a meaningful mainstay in the lives of my nieces and nephews (and hopefully my own grandchildren) as they make their ways into adulthood.

Buy: Bookshop.org // Amazon

Currently on my nightstand: Rising Strong by Brene Brown (flipping between the book and audio), Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, and The Power of Writing It Down by Allison Fallon.

Worth Listening: The True Hard Work of Love + Relationships with Alain de Botton - the On Being podcast

This episode, a rebroadcast from a 2017 interview (though new to me), acknowledges the messy and imperfect realities of partnership, while still recognizing the beauty and growth inherent in the act of committing ourselves to another person. “Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.” I especially loved the discussion around expecting our partners to know us on such deep, nuanced levels—ones that we would never expect anyone else in our life to know, and ones that we most likely will never know ourselves.

Alain de Botton is a writer and philosopher, and is the author of many books on love. His article “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person” was The New York Times’ most read story of 2016.

Worth Sipping: Conversation Heart Ice Cubes // The Bloody Valentine

Smoky, bitter, slightly sweet—this is one of my favorite cocktails, especially on V-day. Highly suggest making a double batch!

And if you see the heart-shaped silicone molds—usually intended for candy- and truffle-making—lurking around Target, Home Goods, etc, they do double duty as ice cube trays. Add your favorite juices, freeze, and plop the cubes into a glass of seltzer or a G&T for a quick, easy and very cute cocktail or mocktail.

Worth Taking Note: Noted by Post-it - Target

Self-love means spending $5.99 on cute teal sticky notes—and this new line is helping my procrastination and disorganization by at least .5%. I bought the “Top 3” pad and the “For Today” pad; I use the former at night to organize my priorities for the following day, and have found that narrowing my focus to just three things to get done really helps with my overwhelm.

I also spent 25 minutes wandering around Office Depot because that’s how I find joy during month 11 of a pandemic, and stumbled across these translucent sticky notes! They’re really great for note-taking or “highlighting” in library books or books that you don’t want to permanently mark up. Also can not get enough of these pastel highlighters; truly dreamy and 1000% less obnoxious than their fluorescent counterparts.

Worth Spending: Audrey Lee Year of Women Mug ($14) - Anthropologie

Life is too short to drink coffee out of boring mugs. I bought this one for myself, and immediately regretted not stockpiling a whole slew of them for my girlfriends as gifts. The weight is perfect, the handle is sturdy and wide, and the silhouettes of women by artist Audrey Lee are bold and colorful—who wouldn’t like to start the day with this lovely vessel?

Bonus buys: 30 Valentine’s Gifts from Black-Owned Businesses, Buzzfeed. Such a great list of goods that tbh are also ideal for gifting to yourself (or your pals) any time of the year.

Worth Quoting: Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”