Everything I Know About Love

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Chapters 25-30

Chapters 31-36

Chapters 37-42

Chapters 43-45

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 37-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 37 Summary: “I Got Gurued”

Alderton writes a freelance piece about the dangers of people-pleasing for a magazine. The editor suggests she talk to an actor-turned-writer named David, who will soon publish a book on the same subject. Alderton reads the book and finds its assessment of how the human need for validation cuts happiness short to be “frustratingly brilliant.” They email first, then speak on the phone. Alderton later characterizes David to her friends as a guru who spoke to something inside her that no one ever spoke to before. After writing the piece, Alderton forgets about David for a few months. He reaches out to see when the piece will be published, and the two begin an increasingly intimate relationship over texts and phone calls. Soon, David reveals he has four children from a previous marriage. Alderton’s friends become frustrated with her as she pays more attention to her phone than them. Eventually, David returns to England, and they arrange a date.

The night before, David asks Alderton to come over since their homes are so close. She hesitates, so he comes to see her. They kiss outside in the middle of the road. Alderton and David stay up late talking, and they fall asleep together. Alderton wakes up to find David getting dressed and leaving in a hurry. He later texts that their time together opened something within him he needs to process, and Alderton politely yet firmly tells him she cannot be half in, half out with him. She deletes their messages and David’s number, and when the people-pleasing article comes out, she does not tell him. She never hears from David again: Alderton eventually realizes that she and David are similar enough that the intense intimacy between them may have frightened him.

Chapter 38 Summary: “Good Morning to Karen’s Fertile and Barren Friends…”

Natalia sends a group email regarding Karen’s upcoming baby shower. The email describes the shower as an expensive celebration in a way meant to alienate Karen’s childless friends and make her friends with children feel inadequate.

Chapter 39 Summary: “Enough”

After David, Alderton takes a short-lived vow of celibacy. In the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays, Alderton engages in what her friends call a “Christmas Special,” a casual fling or sexual encounter fueled by giddy pre-holiday spirits. Alderton invites a match from a dating app over for drinks, and they have unremarkable sex. Alderton realizes she no longer finds casual sex thrilling or even good, and thinks she is entering a new phase of her life. Her dating column ends, and she realizes she has always been “addicted” to boys and that the column enabled her. When Alderton and Farly return from Sardinia, Alderton begins reading about sex and love addiction.

After learning more about sex addiction, Alderton realizes she confused intensity for intimacy, and she becomes abstinent. Alderton relishes her new perspective: For example, she attends a wedding and participates in her friends’ happiness, rather than treating the event like a “meat market.” One afternoon, Farly tells Alderton that she has lately found her presence calming, despite not knowing Alderton to be calm once in their 20-year friendship. Alderton realizes that she does not need a guru, a certain haircut, a song written about her, or a new weight-loss tactic to be enough. She already is enough, more than enough, and she is full of joy.

Chapter 40 Summary: “Twenty-Eight Lessons Learned in Twenty-Eight Years”

This list includes lessons such as: Be cautious in emulating the partying and sexual habits of celebrities; life is an unsatisfying formula of good and bad luck, but it is also fun and silly; therapy is useful for figuring yourself out, but it can only get you so far; not every choice is indicative of your moral compass, but do as much good as you can; you are allowed to focus on yourself; Dolly Parton is the only woman who does not have to choose between a good manicure and playing the guitar; and everything can change at any time, and it will.

Chapter 41 Summary: “Homecoming”

Alderton navigates the things she does not know about love, such as what a long-term relationship is like or how to live together with a romantic partner. Ultimately, everything she has learned about love has come from her long friendships with women. She knows every detail about her closest friends, and their relationships are founded on deep trust: They are a unit, not separate individuals. Their love is loud and jubilant, but also quiet and peaceful. As Alderton’s friends move out of their shared house and into new flats with their boyfriends, Alderton decides to rent a one-bedroom of her own and starts a new story for herself. India helps her find a place in Camden, and Farley helps her move in. The first morning in her new home, Alderton wakes up and sees she is “floating in a sea of love” made up of her mother’s recipe cards, her friends’ vinyl records, old photographs, and Farley’s note on her pillow: “I love your new home and I love you” (323).

Chapter 42 Summary: “Everything I Know About Love at Twenty-Eight”

The lessons listed in this chapter are expansions and revisions of previous “Everything I Know” chapters. Now, instead of believing a woman needs to do certain things to keep a man interested, Alderton believes women should be at peace with themselves. She also revises her stance on what to do with one’s pubic hair: Get a wax if you want a wax, and if you do not want one, do not get one. If women’s rights are really the issue someone hopes to address with those decisions, that energy is better spent volunteering at a women’s shelter. Everyone has a history, and that history does not make them unworthy of love. Orgasms should never be faked. Near the end of the chapter, Alderton repeats her therapist Eleanor’s advice: “Unless someone dies, if a relationship goes wrong, you somehow had a part to play in it” (328).

Chapters 37-42 Analysis

This section introduces one of Alderton’s most significant relationships with a male partner: David, the guru. At the outset, David makes Alderton feel special, and he seems to understand her in a way no one else does. In Eastern religions like Hinduism, “guru” is a Sanskrit term meaning “teacher” or “master” and referred to an individual who leads students on a spiritual path of knowledge and enlightenment. In modern Western societies, “guru” has become a fraught term. In Bret Contreras’s 2014 short essay, “You Got Guru’d,” he writes that the word “guru” now has a derogatory meaning. Western gurus are more commonly associated with new religious movements, specifically to describe leaders of those movements who gain a following and then exploit their followers’ naivete and trust, often for predatory financial purposes.

David is not a financial predator, rather, he may be an emotional predator. He and Alderton forge an immediately intense rapport, discussing deeply personal, emotional subjects that Alderton seldom if ever opens up about to her closest friends. Because David understands Alderton’s people-pleasing tendencies so well —the man literally wrote the book on people-pleasing—he is able to manipulate that to his advantage. David at the time is undergoing stressors from other relationships, and he may pursue a connection with Alderton in order to reestablish a sense of stability and control in his own life. Alderton, on the other hand, encourages and enjoys David’s attention because his “guru” insights provoke self-reflection and further the progress she has made in therapy.

Ultimately, their short-lived bond leads Alderton to realize her over-reliance on sex as a substitute for love and that she used that misconception to control her friendships and romantic relationships. By maintaining the illusion of vulnerability, Alderton only reveals certain parts of herself to certain people, curating a version of herself that best suits different interpersonal bonds, much in the same way that as a teenager she presented a perfected version of herself online. Alderton relinquishes her need for control because she learns that control is not love, and her manufactured image is not reflective of her real identity.

She further contends with the realization that her friendships offer just as substantial a form of love as her romantic relationships, and that by relinquishing her people-pleasing tendencies and her desire to maintain control over others, Alderton is able to embrace not only her friends as her true loves, but herself as an individual worthy of love just by existing as she already is. She does not need any of the things visual or social media says she needs to be “enough”—she is already enough, already worthy.