I have a very childish attitude to books – a very non-analytic enthusiasm… like Alice falling down the chute.
Romantic comedies seem to take over where the fairytales of childhood left off, feeding our dreams of a soulmate; though, sadly, the Hollywood endings prove quite elusive in the real world.
For most of us, when our ‘dreams’ – I use the word with reservations – came true, and marriage and motherhood became a reality, the romcoms, like horoscopes, swiftly lost their allure.
Since so many romantic comedies vary little in their storyline, the success or failure of such movies depends largely on whether we believe in the relationship of the protagonists.
I hate the thought of my children being glued to a screen. Children only play on computers all day because their parents let them.
I’ve been accused of riding roughshod over others’ emotions, and I admit, when I feel a friend is being over-indulgent, my patience is in short supply.
For many young women, the dream of independence and a home of their own is a tantalising goal, while a lifetime devoted solely to catering for another person’s needs would be hard to countenance.
I recognise my old self in a lot of the letters I get from single women who are unrealistic about what they want.
When I last looked, there weren’t queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies’ doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child.
Having a baby is a disaster for your career. I don’t think there’s any sympathy.
Translating any insights I have for strangers’ lives into positive action in my own has proved a challenge. While I’ve learned a lot about what everyone else is thinking, I fail miserably to use such knowledge in my private relationships.
The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.
Every friendship goes through ups and downs. Dysfunctional patterns set in external situations cause internal friction you grow apart and then bounce back together.
Sustaining true friendship is a lot more challenging than we give it credit for.
In romance, we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner’s foibles in intimate detail; in friendship, we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.
Like cars, every relationship requires a bit of an occasional service, and fine-tuning should be compulsory.
Mixed messages are just part and parcel of the romantic terrain, and rather than berate yourself for any crossed wires, you’d do better to work on your future resilience.
You only need to look at Jane Austen to see how crossed wires can become a defining aspect of romantic life. Then again, if the course of true love ran more smoothly, it would have a terribly detrimental effect on our cache of love stories.
Far too many girls’ and women’s romantic relationships are formed around a negation of their own worth and attributes rather than a confirmation of them.
Girls have a tendency to take responsibility for romantic misinterpretations, when often it’s men whose perfectly honed emotional inscrutability makes life more complicated than it should be.
I met Jason on a charity walk in 2001, and we got married on a friend’s boat in Panama two years later. It was the perfect wedding for two people who’d already been married and who weren’t teenagers.