Is Love Real?

As I sit on my sofa on the 23rd of December, watching Love Actually and eating my go-to meal, aglio e olio - thrown together with whatever ingredients I can find in my fridge, I can’t help but ask myself: Is sex love?

I mean, really, what is love? Everyone defines it differently. If you asked my friends, none of them could give you a concrete answer.

Take my friend - we’ll call her Stacey. She used to rave about how perfect her life was with her boyfriend, we’ll call him John. Stacey was convinced she was in love. But when John broke her heart, that so-called love turned into hatred almost overnight. Suddenly, she denied ever loving him at all. It was as though the feelings she had cherished so deeply were never real. Stacey had been so caught up in the idea of the ‘perfect’ relationship that she mistook her emotions for love, until reality hit.

So, how do we even know the difference between liking someone and loving them? Honestly, we don’t. And won’t - until that fateful moment when we meet someone, and realise our feelings are unlike anything we’ve felt before.

Watching Love Actually and its infamous Sarah and Karl scene only added to my questions. Were they in love? Or was it just a Christmas party fling with a workplace crush? It’s clear Sarah loved Karl, but did he feel the same? Or was he just hoping for a happy ending to finish off the night?

This is where the story splits into endless possibilities, left open to interpretation. Would things have been different if Sarah had stayed the night? Could they have had something real? Or would it have just been another awkward one-night stand, forgotten by Karl by the time morning came?

And so, we are left with the question: is love simply a feeling, or is it something deeper, beyond the grasp of an unloved mind? Maybe love isn’t meant to be defined. Perhaps it’s like Sarah and Karl - complicated, messy, and open to interpretation. Will we ever truly understand what love is until we’ve experienced it ourselves?

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