Love Is Not Enough

Night was descending as the metro lurched to a halt. I gathered the last of my energy, grabbed my heavy bag, and stepped off the sweaty carriage, away from the hot and sticky breath of a hundred strangers and into the cool evening air. It washed over me like a gentle wave as I spotted my boyfriend heading towards me. I smiled, but he did not return it. He never smiled upon meeting. It was a curious habit that irked me on normal days, but irritated me immensely that day after the hellish journey I had just endured.

He said he was happy to see me. I just felt relief that my odyssey was almost over. I dropped the weighty cargo I had lugged around all day, and we embraced. Over his shoulder, my gaze crossed that of a silver-haired, bespectacled older gentlemen slipping past us to catch the soon-to-depart train. Softly, so softly that I could never be quite sure I hadn’t imagined it, he whispered to me,

“Love is not enough.”

…..

I didn’t mention anything to my boyfriend as we made our way through the darkening alleyways of Paris, lugging my bag up and down seemingly endless 18th century stone stairs. I didn’t notice or appreciate their beauty in the moment, too preoccupied by my aching arms and my yearning to finally sit down in a comfortable chair. We chattered, exchanged news, stopped to get something to eat. But later, in the dark and stillness of the midnight hours, in a small Parisian attic, a time and place made for thinking, the stranger’s words echoed around my mind.

Love is not enough.

We had been together four years. Four great years, mostly. But he lived in France, I lived in England. We had met when I was in France for a summer, studying at a language school in his hometown. We had sat next to each other on a tram the day after my arrival, and seen each other every other day since. It was one of those summer romances that you believe only happen in novels, until it happens to you. We always knew I was leaving after three months, so we always knew when it would end. But on my last day we had lunch together, and I cried in the restaurant when the waiter brought our drinks. At the end of the meal, he asked if we could stay in touch after I left. And so we did, for four years.

But now we were four years older and wiser, and it was no longer all plain sailing. We were adults now, with adult responsibilities. He had just moved to Paris to start a career in the fashion industry, and I was settled in London with a good job and good friends. We were not students any more, with oceans of time and freedom. More than that, he had no desire to live in London, and I didn’t see my future in France. We loved each other, but…

Love is not enough.

He was my first love, so I probably held onto him a lot longer than I should have. I had never been in love before, so I had no idea how strong the feeling was, and how hard it would be to let go. We were not right for each other, our futures did not align, and, honestly, our relationship had run its course long ago. But I believed, naively, that if we still loved each other, we should stay together. So I desperately needed someone, anyone, a stranger on the open-air platform of a French metro station, with no context other than the weariness on my face and our perfunctory embrace, to tell me,

“Non, petit bateau,

L'amour ne suffit pas.”

If Paris is the city of lovers, then it must also be the city of heartbreak. There is no love without pain, and there is no beginning without an end. But not this trip. I would enjoy this last weekend in Paris, wrapped up in a nostalgic bubble of first love for the last time. The end would come a couple of months later, when his Eurostar to London was cancelled at the last minute, and we never rescheduled. Because sometimes, and especially when there is a sea between you,

Love is not enough.

…..

Years later, I would remember those words again. I had a boyfriend who I loved deeply, and had supported through some dark times. It was an intense relationship, and we had fallen in love hard. Sadly, he had many issues about his identity, faith, and place in society, on top of a (misdiagnosed at that time) mental health disorder. He clung to me like a drowning man clings to flotsam after a shipwreck. But then I started to drown too. I agonised over what to do. I didn’t want to leave, and I wanted to help him. But he treated me badly, and I was very unhappy. I waved it all away because he had an illness, and because I loved him. Then I remembered the words of a passing stranger in Paris many years ago:

Love is not enough.

….

After that, I had a relationship that was almost exactly the opposite. He was fun and funny and the life and soul of the party. He was sociable and personable and amiable and everybody loved him. He could make friends at the drop of a hat, and did so. We had a fiery connection, full of roaring laughter and blazing arguments. I loved him more than I knew it was possible to love someone. At a time when my job had turned into a nightmare and the stress was starting to overwhelm me, he was the lighthouse shining out from the clifftop, saving me from crashing on the perilous rocks below.

I was desperate to leave my job, and longing for a fresh start. I had been in London for five years at that point and was ready to move on. But he wasn’t. He was a Londoner born and bred, with a great career and a recent promotion in the City. He talked about wanting to move to the East End, where I lived, to be closer to me and to his family. For the first time in my life, I saw a future with someone. I saw myself at our Nigerian wedding, and buying a small townhouse down one of those Leyton lanes, and later taking our two children every Sunday to watch his bloody local football team that he never stopped talking about.

It was then that I realised that love had truly made me lose my mind. I didn’t want those things. I had never wanted those things. I always hated the idea of a big wedding, and I had decided to be child-free at about age 14. I never played with dolls as a child, never envisioned a future family, never, ever saw myself as a wife and mother. I could maybe get on board with a house of my own.

But not yet. I was still a young woman, but getting older, feeling the almost but not entirely imperceptible advance of time, like a cruise ship moving slowly but steadily onwards. There were still so many places to go, and people to meet, and things to see. It felt like now or never; I would never be this young and free again. I thought back to that evening in Paris, and I felt again the cool breeze brush my face while the day was dying, and the shock like a bucket of cold water when an old man whispered,

“Love is not enough.”

I broke his heart, and mine, when I met him on a Friday evening and told him I had just resigned and was leaving London imminently. Love is an anchor, keeping us safe, stopping us from drifting into danger. But an anchor also holds us in place. Maybe one day I might find a sister ship, but it’s not a priority. I want more from life than love. Two months on from that Friday night, I pulled up the anchor for good and was on my way to Zambia, full steam ahead towards the adventure of a lifetime.