THE POETRY PHARMACY CONDITION: MATURING RELATIONSHIPS

Also suitable for end of honeymoon period · romantic paranoia · relationship doubts

One of the great myths of our media culture is that love is a static thing: we fall in love, we are told, and then we stay that way, giddy on the same hormones, for decades. Of course this is a falsehood. In fact, love is a constantly evolving thing, a process that surprises us at every turn.

This fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of love means we can mistake a change in the nature of our relationship for a decline in its quality, but the two things are not the same at all. A partnership may shift; elements of it may crumble and be lost. But it is not dying: rather, those elements are falling away like dead skin, shucked off to reveal something new and fresh.

One of the most alarming changes in a relationship is the first: the end of the honeymoon period. In its early stages, love needs to keep us doped up just to keep both partners in the same place long enough for a true bond to form. Once that closeness has been forged, the chemicals are no longer needed. We return to our right minds – and can be astonished to see what we have built together under the influence.

Similarly, as Seamus Heaney suggests in this poem, the shallower, easier connections on which we rely in a romance’s early stages are like its scaffolding: once the space at their heart has been filled by a building of lasting stone, those flimsy structures can be allowed to fall away.

William Sieghart down when the job’s done Showing off walls of sure

and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

The Poetry Pharmacy Returns is published by Particular (£12.99)