Falling In and Out of Love

I've listened to many of Krista Tippet's interviews--this one is with Alain de Botton on the meaning of love:

https://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/ 

There are two versions of each of Krista's shows (On Being)--the edited version and the uncut version; I always prefer the latter as it's more like eavesdropping on a complete conversation.

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I hadn't seen Amanda since her wedding a few months ago, so it was good to have an evening together, just us two.  We chose Italian (Edera's) to evoke memories of our trip to Tuscany together.  She looked stunning all dressed in black--and the more she told me about Mike, how they met, how happy they are, the more I knew that the shine all over her came from the happiness of being in love "with her best friend."

Amanda is in her late-thirties; her parents are younger than I am--yet we did what women of all ages all over the world were doing last night--talking about love.  She mentioned casually that she had gotten her master's degree since we last visited, that she's been working at USAA for 18 years, that she's published a book, and that her mother has moved to San Antonio.  But the bulk of our conversation was about love, romance, and all the stories we tell about ourselves about love.

She told me with great animation about how she met Mike, how they negotiated thorny issues, and how they fell headlong into love.   She recounted several early conversations verbatim.  When I've been in love, I've done the same thing.

"We so often read each other's minds," she said.  "I'll be thinking about something and he will call at that very moment and talk about that very thing....We don't even have to talk to know what each other is thinking...."

"Wherever I go, I call him on the way home and tell him all about what I've been doing," she said.  (Men may not know this, but this is one of the things we women treasure most about being in love.) "Or I'll see something and know he'd love it, and I'll buy it for him, or take a picture of it."

I was entranced by Amanda's story. No genre of stories enchant and cheer listeners more than love stories. When a friend tells her love story, we are vicariously in love again ourselves, ready to hope with the teller that all will stay magical until the end of time.

I wondered: were there any tables anywhere, in any restaurant, at which two men were having conversations about love?  Losing love?  Breaking up?  Being married to their best friends?

Sure, men (like Alain de Botton) write about love.  And men talk about love to their partners and women friends.  But can you imagine a couple of men sharing every detail of their love lives for two hours, over pasta and wine?