Ask Bob Lampard

I came across this letter by Sally Brompton, who writes for the Sunday Times on the ’subject of love’ and felt I ought to share it with you.

See what you think and let me have your comments.

Last year, I asked a friend what his new year’s resolutions might be. He said he didn’t make resolutions. He set goals. There were quite a few, he said, but by far the most important was, “To love and be loved.” Adorable, no? Most people would simply say they want to find love, a relationship or a boyfriend, as if love was a state of having rather than one of sharing.

That friend has still not found love, which drives his closest friend, my normally sane husband, to the conclusion that all women are in some way mad. It may be because he tucks his T-shirts into his trousers. Still, you’d think anyone would jump at the chance to be loved by someone who understands that losing is the better part of love.

But most of us, sadly, are weirdly had at being loved, perhaps because we find it hard to believe that we are lovable. You cannot accept love if you think you might be unworthy in some way. The real luxury of love is being at ease in ourselves. We might catch the odd, fleeting glimpse, when our child smiles, when the person we love looks at us and thinks that we are perfect, when, for just a moment, this difficult, disjointed universe holds its breath. Or we might try to create it in ourselves.

We talk, in the vaguest way, about “finding love”, as if it is some rare butterfly that must be netted, rather than an act of conscious effort. We rarely talk about wanting to “give love”, but instead focus on giddy happiness and a world suddenly transformed and made wonderful. We want love to be done to us.

But love comes in two parts — receiving and giving. Love is seeing another person as they are (rather than as we want them to be). And it is allowing ourselves to be seen as we truly are — all flaws and frailties forgiven. My husband does not buy me diamonds or handbags or fine leather shoes, but every time he goes to the supermarket, he never forgets to buy a crate of my favourite Diet Coke (of which he strongly disapproves), and he has never once taken me to task for the cigarettes I love so much. He does not try to change me, but leaves the question of giving them up to me, which I will one day.

My favourite therapist says there are only two pure emotions — love and fear. “Live in love,” she says, not as an idle instruction from a self-help manual, but as a serious act that requires discipline, focus and intense effort. For me, this may mean accepting my husband’s occasional dark mood as his own, and not mine to take personally, and giving him a hug rather than a cold shoulder. Or it may simply mean smiling at a stranger. I know if I live in love, the world seems better.

Every morning, very early, I take my teenage daughter to the Tube to go to school. Inevitably, this being the inner city, there is somebody ranting on the pavement, mad with drink or crack. The first time it happened, Molly was so frightened, she wanted to cross the road. I held her hand and we both said, “Good morning,” smiling at the woman who was shouting. A hand shot out to pat Molly clumsily on the shoulder. “Sorry, love. Didn’t mean no harm. You have a good morning too.”

We are all frightened. None of us feels good enough, so we turn inward, not outward — to drink, to drugs, to food, to loneliness. We are blinded by self-absorption. We forget that we are all in this together. Just the other day, when life seemed difficult and hostile, I found a text message on my phone from a friend. “Don’t ever forget how much you are loved.” It was a small gesture, born out of enormous generosity. Immediately, it made the world seem better. And that is the luxury of love.