Love. That little four-letter word gets bandied around a lot. We love people, places, pets, books, and pizza!
“Love” might mean enjoyment, connection, satisfaction, awe, contentment, excitement, emotions. Often love for people is associated with the word “romance”. But the two are not similes. Romance usually conflates with enjoyment. Love sometimes does not. Anyone who has had to tough their way through bad times, pitfalls, misunderstandings and disagreements with someone they love knows that it takes a toughness that romance can only see in the distance.
Even pizza can lead you astray … loving it is marvellous, but sometimes the after-effects can make you wish you’d chosen salad!
Romance is that hurdy gurdy feeling of a first date, or feeling your heart race when you spy someone across the room for the first time. These things are not necessarily love. They might be attraction, lust, loneliness, status, or simply a biological urge! They might turn into love, but at that moment in time it really is pure romance.
Relationship is the bridge between the two. Relationship is the underlying to and fro, the getting and the giving, the emotional highway between two people. To me, relationship is just as romantic in its own way. The surety of connection. The revelations that come from living life alongside another human. The honesty of being able to rely on someone to open your heart and mind to – all your fears and anxieties, all your hopes and all your ambitions. All your mistakes!
Romance is nice to read – its sales can attest to that. But to me, watching someone work through the issues of setting up a relationship with another person, so that the romance evolves into deep love – this is what makes for the best reading.
And so it is that I set out with the intention of writing something which transcends romance, which goes beyond mere attraction and which takes in other facets of life too – family, friendships, careers, money, housing.
Because the best reading is what I’m aiming to write.
Joni Page 