"Everything I Know About Love" and Everything I've Learned From It
"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."
Navigating your 20s—the years that many preach are the most telling and enjoyable, yet crucial of your life—often feels like trying to learn the complex steps of an ever-changing dance. During this time, you learn what it’s like to experience true freedom, embrace pain, accept responsibility, and feel relationships to their fullest. These elements exist in such specific forms, similar to the experiences that shaped your adolescence: getting your driver's license, feeling nostalgia driving down the street you grew up on, experiencing your first heartbreak, navigating the feelings of grief, and the bittersweet taste of not yet wanting to give up your youth, but also ready to enter into what comes after.
For many young women, these years are a critical time of discovering who you are and what you hold close to your heart, whether that be the friendships you cling to, the love you receive, or your personal growth as you continue life's journey. Dolly Alderton captures how beautiful, raw, and equally chaotic the journey of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood can be. Through her candid reflections on friendships, heartbreak, and the messy beauty of early adulthood, Alderton offers advice for young women trying to navigate their own rites of passage.
In contrast to Dolly’s romantic relationships, she explained that none compare to her and Farley’s lifelong friendship, a connection that has proven to be the most significant and enduring bond of all. The friendship shared between the two symbolizes a deep, unwavering connection found uniquely in female friendships. It is a unique type of love that by far outlasts romantic relationships through intangible endearment, creating a web of emotional support that is necessary to get through life's ups and downs.
From choosing color palettes for bridesmaid dresses to yapping over numerous cocktails on vacation to laying on the couch doing nothing to helping pick up the pieces of one another after a breakup, Dolly’s reflections on her bond with Farley highlight the irrevocable role that close female friendships played in shaping her own personal growth. Female friendships are unique in the sense that they are often a reflection of the love we wish to receive in romantic relationships, but they represent a type of love that offers elements that sometimes cannot be found in romantic relationships: vulnerability, unconditional support and nurturing. Ultimately, Dolly and Farley’s friendship reinforces the central theme of Everything I Know About Love: love comes in many forms, but friendship (in her experience) is the most profound.
@lissreads I am once again asking you to read this book #everythingiknowaboutlove #dollyalderton #booktok #fyp #bookrecommendations #DoritosTriangleTryout ♬ i love women - alle
Alderton mellows out as the years go on; in the beginning, she was adamant about receiving love from men. She spent an abundance of time comparing her romantic relationships to those of her friends that she completely missed what was going on around her. Being in your 20s is completely confusing and random: you have some friends settling down, friends still living with their parents, friends completely changing their career paths, friends just starting school, friends gaining full financial stability. Alderton resonates with her readers by sharing, "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. '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."
Because of this uncertain time in your life, it's very easy to feel like you are flailing around like one of those inflatable tube people outside of gas stations and car dealerships. You must remember that not everyone's paths align or look the same, in fact, they rarely do. In a world where people are so quick to share their rapidly moving lives on social media, it is easy to feel like you are not on the right track. The truth is, you're just on a different one. Self-acceptance can take a while to find, and can even disappear for a little bit, but, rest assured, you can always get it back.
"Nearly everything I know about love, I have learned in my long-term friendships with women. Particularly, the ones I have lived with at one point or another. I know what it is to know every tiny detail about a person and revel in that knowledge as if it were an academic subject."
Alderton beautifully emphasizes the deep, intimate understandings she has gained from her long-term female friendships and how they have positively affected her. She says that love isn’t just about her romantic experiences with men, but is also found in the closeness and shared experiences of friendship.
Alderton's life never ended when she experienced a breakup, lost a job opportunity, or failed an exam at University, although it might have felt like it at the time. She was always able to move forward and rebuild, as long as she had the unwavering support of her friends, whom she came home to every night and reminded her that she would never have to journey through life alone, no matter how messy or complicated life could get.
Alderton's memoir expands the definition of love beyond romance, making it highly relatable for young female audiences discovering themselves through their friendships. While it is normal to want to settle down, or even ponder on the fact that you might want to settle down sometime during this confusing part of life, it is also important to recognize the difference in the types of love that come from both platonic and romantic relationships and what this brings to the table when in a romantic partnership. Dolly Alderton emphasizes this point in, "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." Dolly realizes that there are parts of herself and her friends that are so special that she knows they cannot be recreated by a male counterpart.
Love is knowing exactly how someone takes their coffee, their hyper fixations on certain topics, their favorite song from sophomore year of high school, and the name they've already picked for their future child. Female friendships are special because they are more than just knowing someone’s favorite color or season of the year; it is knowing someone so deeply and unequivocally that there’s absolutely nothing you don’t know about them.
What makes these friendships so special is that the type of love Alderton experiences is a type of love that is only shared with the women in her life. Girls have a way of being, doing, and saying in a way that is so gentle and pure that speaks to the unique quality of energy radiating from female presence. Dolly reveals this message of appreciating the distinct love she receives in sharing, "Love was there in my empty bed. It was piled up in the records Lauren bought me when we were teenagers. It was in the smudged recipe cards from my mum in between the pages of cookbooks in the kitchen cabinet. Love was in the bottle of gin tied with a ribbon that India had packed me off with; in the smeary photo-strips with curled cornets that would end up stuck to my fridge. It was in the note that lay on the pillow next to me, the one I would fold up and keep in the shoebox of all the other notes she had written before." Chosen love surpasses the strength of family bonds at times, specifically during one's 20s, shifting titles from close friends to chosen family due to the fact that we are all learning how to grow up together.
At the end of the memoir, at the very bottom of the very last page, Alderton dedicates this book to her best friend since childhood, Farley. Throughout the book Alderton plays out their ups and downs, but overall stability she knew she had in this friend. Together, the two girls navigate everything from high school boyfriends and heartbreak to the loss of family members and called off engagements; all of which brings us to the message of Everything I Know About Love.
Romantic relationships come and go, and jobs will pay off ever so often, but the one thing you can really count on in life is your best friend. A true best friend will never refrain from showing you what it’s like to be loved, and only then will you know what true love and friendship is.
