Natasha Lunn

When I asked psychiatrist Dr Megan Poe why people lose their sense of self in relationships, she said it’s sometimes because they’re trying to ‘echo-locate the other and not reveal the self’ and merge with them.

when I met a group of friends at university it was the first time I could lean on a set of people who saw all the different sides of me. We had different dynamics and personalities, but they became a form of family I’d been longing for. They taught me love could be consistent and solid and steady, that it could make me feel safe. I know some people prioritize romantic love over friendship, but the truth is I love my friends more than I have loved any partner. They are the people who have shown me what it means to love and be loved.

Perhaps not having a label on friendship means it feels less like it could officially break. Of course a friendship can end too, but if it does, the break can be more of a slow drift.

I would not be the person I am now without my friends. They point out my successes when sometimes I can’t see them.

They show me the good parts of who I am when I don’t like myself.

Your cousin is pretty, but you’re smart.’ (Now I’m older I think, why would you say that to a kid?)

Then when I got to school they said I had behavioural issues and put me in the lowest sets. I thought, right, not only am I not pretty, which I’ve understood as the value that you have in this world, but I’m also not smart. When you’re thinking those things until you’re fifteen, there’s no way that you’re going to emerge as an adult who says, ‘I am amazing.’ Even when I was on the bestseller list, I couldn’t really see what I’d achieved. So it’s moving when friends encourage me to celebrate my successes.

All love begins with imagination and fear,

That’s why I dated people for exactly two years: in the second year I became annoyed by the human beneath the fantasies I’d built.

hat’s not necessarily the partner’s fault; you’re the one who has created an imaginative fantasy around them.