PERSONAL ESSAY

Conversations in Love author Natasha Lunn on what six experts taught her about love

The editor of the popular Conversations on Love newsletter has quizzed everyone from Alain de Botton to Esther Perel and Philippa Perry about what love is. The result is one of this summer’s most buzzed‑about books

TOM WERNER
The Sunday Times

For years I thought I was obsessed with love, but I was wrong. I was fixated on longing rather than knowing, and on infatuation instead of connection. I spent many nights asking, “When will I ever find love?” without pausing to ask precisely what I was searching for.

I wondered if, perhaps, I’d misunderstood love completely. Why could I walk away from a job I was unhappy with, but not from a bad relationship? Why did I have agency in every aspect of my life, and not in love? It led me to start a newsletter called Conversations on Love, in which I’ve spent four years asking authors, therapists and writers about the different shapes that love can take in a life. Not just