By Bethan Croft
“When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you’re happy, and sing All Saints with you when you’re drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you forever. Keep it as close to you as you can.” - Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love
Everything I Know About Love is a novel that resonates with many women. We may not have all shared the experience of spending a few hundred pounds on a taxi at 5am after a night out in ‘Oxford’, but I think it’s safe to say many of us have experienced that feeling of being lost in our late teens and twenties. And, Dolly’s book feels like a safety blanket as she reassures us through her many stories of mistakes and regrets - that we all inevitably make - as she finds support in her familiar systems of friendships and the odd bowl of Hangover Cure Mac 'N' Cheese.
What is the message of the book?
I think the most important message from the book is to value your time alone, and that we learn something from each relationship; whether it’s our flaws or knowing that we could never be in a relationship like that again. Yet all of those experiences help us learn what red flags to look out for in the future.
Dolly's work is about loving all the good people in your life unconditionally. It's also about recognising the difference in relationships as you reach adulthood and realising that you may not see the friends you grew up with every day anymore, but that doesn’t make your bond any lesser. In fact, those friendships are often the strongest, as you have the ability to pick up where you left off and laugh together as if you hadn’t been apart for a day.
Our friendships often tend to be different to how our teenage-selves expected them to be and so are the promises we made each other, 'When we're older we are going to have houses next door to each other...' But, like the book says, “You are moving out of the realm of fantasy "when I grow up" and adjusting to the reality that you're there; it's happening.”
Not everything works out according to plan and least of all relationships, however, I think lots of us come to the age where we realise the person putting the most pressure on us, is ourselves.
In the wholly honest truth, it is exhausting keeping up with trends and expectations. Like Dolly so perfectly explains, “It is futile and knackering to try and make all your tiny choices representative of your moral compass then beat yourself up when this plan inevitably fails. Feminists can get waxed. Priests can swear. Vegetarians can wear leather shoes. Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.”
As soon as we stop living life in the way we think we are expected to, we can start living life how we want to. Dolly says, “I am always half in life, half in a fantastical version of it in my head.” And I can't think of a better way to be. Enjoy every moment and don’t take life too seriously.
"I feel more powerful than ever. And more peaceful too. I am living more truthfully than I’ve ever lived. I may not be the exact portrait of womanhood that my teenage self envisaged (sophisticated and slim; wearing black dresses and drinking martinis and meeting men at book launches and exhibition openings). I may not have all the exact things I thought I’d have at thirty. Or all the things I’ve been told I should have. But I feel content; grateful for every morning that I wake up with another day on this earth and another chance to do good and feel good and make others feel good too."
The book is also about knowing when to let go and when to hold on. The book tells you it’s okay to be single and that it doesn’t mean you are loved any less. But most importantly the book is a story of girlhood and the friendships that stay with us for life. Whether just in memory or whether they’re still by your side.
As well as how some relationships are meant to be fleeting with a strong impact or with a lesson for us to learn from, and others are meant to withstand everything. The school days friendships, the university friendships, the workplace friendships - and how as you enter adulthood a change in those dynamics doesn’t mean you’ve lost those friends.
Much like in the book, Dolly and Farley have been inseparable since they were children and then as they age, other relationships come into perspective. They no longer live together and tell each other every single little thought that pops into their head. This is a pivotal moment in the book when Dolly begins to feel lonely and says, “I would like to pause the story a moment to talk about ‘nothing will change’. I’ve heard it said to me repeatedly by women I love during my twenties when they move in with boyfriends, get engaged, move abroad, get married, get pregnant. ‘Nothing will change.’ It drives me bananas. Everything will change. Everything will change. The love we have for each other stays the same, but the format, the tone, the regularity and the intimacy of our friendship will change forever.”
Yet despite the change, the foundation of love stays the same and that's why when Farley goes through her divorce, Dolly is the first person she turns to. Those friends are there to support you through all kinds of grief – from breakups to deaths.
What is love?
Love doesn’t have to be romantic – it comes in many forms; love within friendships and colleagues, family and pets, a love for nature and peace, a love for the simple things in life. Quite beautifully explained, “Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall.”
Dolly often questions what love is and if she has found it romantically, but there is one thing to be certain about: love is ever-present in her life just maybe not always in the form she seeks. However, Farley is always quick to support her and in one moment she makes a very wholesome reminder:
"'You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. ‘You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’‘ 'How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’ ‘I’m talking about you and me, ’she said.”
This leads Dolly to the profound realisation that, “I hadn't ever thought that a man could love me in the same way that my friends love me; that I could love a man with the same commitment and care with which I love them. Maybe all this time I had been in a great marriage without even realising.”
At the end of the book, Dolly begins to realise her worth. She doesn’t need a relationship to be valued and she finally becomes at peace with herself as she realises that.
“I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is- just me and the trees and the sky and the seas- I know now that that's enough.”
This is why I wish that every young girl and young woman gets the opportunity to read her book, so that they can come to the conclusion that they are enough, sooner.
And lastly, to sum the whole reading experience of this book up in one famous, yet proudly girlhood quote, "Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.”
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