That awkward, icky conversation … love
Every day at home, there’s a couple of suitcases which get a little more packed, and a reality which feels a little more scary.
Our son is getting ready to leave home, to move out to the UK for the rest of the year. Spending time with his grandparents, trying to find work, reconnecting with old schoolfriends.
It’s hard to imagine how quiet this bustling home will become, and it’s actually quite scary. This is the point where I suppose my wife and I should be talking about “getting our life back”, but truth be told, we’re somewhat attached to the one we have.
Change is hard, and for parents watching their child going out, it’s a little anxious and lonely. You smile for them, you say “you’re going to have a great time”, but then you feel a little teary, and before you know it, you’ve selected a sad song from your MP3 player — it seems an appropriate soundtrack to your life right now.
Have you prepared them for everything? That’s the thing going through your mind. You’ve seen them deal with levels of bullying at school, and cope well. You’ve talked to them about sex, sexuality, sexting, consent. Expressed so very strongly the importance of consent. You’ve seen how they behave with friends, how they can mix with almost anyone. How their sense of humour helps them to cope when people are nasty. You’ve encouraged them to talk to you when they have a bad day.
Over the years we’ve talked history, politics, he’s seen his mother battle and win over anxiety, he’s seen me occasionally fight depression. He’s seen how very much his mother and I are in love — despite occasional very loud arguments.
But one thing has bothered me in the last few weeks — he’s never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend. I’ve talked to him about sex, but not about love and relationships.
In so many ways, it’s a much harder conversation than sex. I’ve taught sex education at secondary school — you teach how you have sex, what happens, how babies are brought to term, birth control to prevent pregnancy and sexual disease. This is science, it’s all pretty well known.
But love? As a society we talk about it all the time, there are cards, gifts and movies dedicated to it. But what is it?
Can we promise to love someone without knowing what that truly means? And if we don’t, when we whisper to someone that we love them, isn’t it nothing more than a beautiful lie.
To me, love at it’s core is when someone’s well being means as much to you as your own. It’s the only definition which covers the spectrum of emotion I feel for my parents, my son and my wife.
Of course, when it comes to my wife there is that whole “sexual activities” that happen between consenting couples. But love is more than a word to use to get sex from someone you like. Over twenty years, it’s the desire to support the other’s wellbeing which has got us as a couple and a family through my depression, her anxiety and an awful back injury she sustained 15 years. My son has witnessed this every step of the way.
But maybe because love’s a feeling, and an intense one at that, it just cannot be pinned adequately down to words. It’s almost why we need art through painting and music and sonnet to help portray and express something we so struggle to express. Perhaps that’s the reason we fear the words “I love you”, because in a way those three words feel inadequate.
When Nina Simone sings “To Love Somebody”, you’re left in absolutely no doubt through the sincerity of her singing and the raw power in her voice that she knows what love is, and it’s something that moves her so deeply …
I’ve tried a couple of times to have this conversation with him. It’s either not been the right situation, or I’ve bottled out. We’re still fighting male stereotypes, and for two guys, even as close as we are, it’s still challenging. To talk about love, is to talk about how it makes us feel, and that’s an awkward and vulnerable conversation. But we managed to have it during a recent walk.
It’s probably “a man thing” to try and bring up such important conversations casually “whilst we’re doing something else”. But we did it — that awkward, icky conversation about love. And his first reaction was to scoff “really, we’re doing this here?”. Of course I should know I’ve raised him right, all I had to do was say “this is important to me”, and he went with it.
I told him that love can be intoxicating, it’s probably the most euphoric drug you’ll experience. And also the most dangerous.
Because there’s a dark side to it. Love can make us want to do crazy things, things we’d not normally consider. Sometimes it’s because we’re desperate to impress someone we love. And a sad reality is that when we love someone and either they don’t feel the same, or they hurt us, it feels like there’s no defense against it. It can make us feel angry or incredibly sad.
Sometimes from the hearts, flowers and cards you think love can only make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it can makes us feel other emotions, and all at a really loud intensity.
I asked him to remember everything he’d seen between his mother and I. The times we didn’t speak to each other for days, but also that it didn’t last forever. That we got angry, but we had limits. But most of all, we could work through things. And heck, even such oddballs that we were, we’d found someone in each other who matched our weird. It took us a lot of dating, he’d find his odd match too one day.
And then of course it hit me, as much as I was having this conversation with him, I was having it with myself. I love my son — deeply, utterly. His wellbeing is important to me, to both of us— so we know him going out out into the world will help him to become the adult he needs to be. To figure who he is, what he wants to do.
We’d love to keep him at home just one more year (but then wouldn’t it be just another year?). But it’s not in his interest. This is the right thing for him to do, but it’s so hard. Just as I said, love is an emotion of intensity, and the sadness and anxiety we’re feeling right now are all “that other side of love”. The scary side that we have to deal with.
In the end, although this conversation was important for my peace of mind, I realised how much we’ve prepared him for this moment. He’s seen the best of us, and he’s seen the worst. It was good to hear his thoughts and that he’s felt when love hasn’t gone too well, and he thinks he’ll be able to deal with it.
I hope we’ve taught him by doing, living to values, but being frank when we’re less than perfect. I see in him a maturity and level-headedness I lacked at that age, so we must be doing something right!
Addendum
It kind of sums all this up — but today my son got a leaving card for his mother. The picture (and the message he’s written inside) sum up perfectly the joy, and the sadness that comes with love. We can’t have one without the other, that’s how love goes sometimes …
