Every Thing I Know About Love
Written by Dolly Alderton
Originally published in 2018
~370 pages
Rate 4/5
A 2000s party girl turned into an average modern-day twenty-something.
The memoir follows Dolly as a teenager up until she's in her thirties. I am currently in my early twenties and so I thought this would be great for me to read. However, since mine and her life experiences are not similar it wasn't what I thought it was going to be, but it was still entertaining. Dolly use to be a party girl and now as a thirty-something she is experiencing life as an average twenty-something; the cost of living is hard to manage, romantic partners are hard to find, partying is uncommon, etc.
I have never really been the type of person to ask anyone for money, party super late at night, and risk my life every day. This was seemingly Dolly's experience in her twenties, that lifestyle has never enticed me. Matter of fact, that lifestyle just makes me sad. I am not saying I am better than people who feel the need to express themselves in that way by any means, but it just feels like it's a stage most people go through before they realize how terrible they actually feel about themselves.
At the end of the book it appears as though Dolly and I are finally in the same boat, only difference is she's 35 and I'm 22. I still have A LOT of room to grow and much to experience at least I hope I do. There was some things that I took away from this book regardless of not feel as connected to it as I would have hoped.
First being the importance of friendship. Growing up I was friends with both girls and boys, eventually I started to prefer just girls. It appeared to me as though all the boys I was ever friends with always wanted more. Slowly I began to not really enjoy friendship at all. I am relearning what the meaning of friendship is day by day.
Friendship goes hand in hand with relationships. I had a couple of relationships throughout my life, some more committed than others. Relationships are a more complex version of friendship, I've always felt I could never get the friendship part of the relationship right. I still struggle with this.
There were a lot of great quotes from this book:
"Although I had hated watching Farly be treated so badly by stupid teenage boys over the years—being led on, ignored, dumped—I realized there had been a safety in it."
"I hadn’t ever thought that a man could love me in the same way my friends love me; that I could love a man with the same commitment and care with which I love them."
"Breakups get harder with every year you get older. When you’re young, you lose a boyfriend. As you get older, you lose a life together."
"If you lose respect for someone, you won’t be able to fall back in love with them."
"Integration into each other’s lives should be completely equal; you should both make an effort to be involved with your respective friends, families, interests, and careers. If it’s unbalanced, resentment is on its way to you."
"I officially declare it near-impossible to meet a romantic partner in real life. Accepting that is crucial in realizing you’re not unapproachable or undesirable or doing anything wrong."
"When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind."