VA
It’s like digging a field together: it’s hard work, not very glamorous, but you can stand back and think, “We did that.”
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 October 2020 source ↗
The question
How would you describe what love feels like to you?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this exact standing prompt.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 213 →
Nicholson Baker
Contemporary American novelist and writer
It’s like all your emotions are apples and they get crushed all at once into cider.
Emeli Sandé
British singer
Freedom: it’s euphoric.
It is all there is.
Rosanna Arquette
American actress
Real love feels like freedom.
More from Viv Albertine
View profile →I wish I’d told my mother that, in all the years I knew her, she was never once boring. We weren’t demonstrative, so that would have meant that I loved her.
In my first job in film, a giant bloke dressed like a sumo wrestler asked me to get his G-string out of his arse. He said he couldn’t reach it.
The moment my daughter was born in 1999, because it took me seven years to conceive.
I am going straight to cremation like David Bowie, so there would be no funeral.
Romantic love – what a con. (I do still believe in it.)
I had no female role models growing up. I lived an incredibly sheltered life: there was no TV at home and we had no visitors. It wasn’t until rock and pop came into my life that I concocted myself as a role model.
More on relationships
- Which quality in your friends matters most to you? 65 answers
- Which teacher, parent, coach, or friend most made you who you are, and what did you learn from them? 57 answers
- When you need counsel, who is the first person you call? 12 answers
- Which relationships did you tend well, and which did you neglect while other things felt urgent? 8 answers
- What has been most rewarding about being a parent? 7 answers
Also answered this
Marie Kondo, Jacqueline Wilson, Sandi Toksvig, Fay Ripley, Mary McCartney, Nicholson Baker
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All relationships questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject