What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

The story considers the complexities of various types of love, which Carver juxtaposes throughout. Phila, or love between friends, is at the fore. There is the friendship that exists between Nick, Laura, Mel, and Terri. They meet as “pals” and spend an afternoon together, drinking gin and telling stories. However, there is an undercurrent of competition between the two men and the two women. Nick admires Mel and sees him as his superior, but at the same time, he refuses to endorse Mel’s ideas about love and later sabotages his medieval fantasy. Terri dismisses the happiness between Laura and Nick and cynically suggests that their “honeymoon” phase will end over time. Carver frames the exploration of love through the primary juxtaposition of the husbands and wives as well as through the respective couples.

Carver also contrasts the concepts of eros, romantic love, and mania, obsessive love. The comparison between Nick and Laura’s ostensibly loving and comfortable relationship and Mel and Terri’s tense bickering undercuts the notion of conventional romantic love. Additionally, Terri’s previous relationship with Ed is a traumatic example of obsessive love, which Terri endeavors to validate. Terri believes that Ed, her ex-partner, demonstrated his love for her through violence, which she sees not as abuse but as deep-felt passion. The prickly relationship between Mel and Terri is contrasted with the “honeymoon” period that comparatively newly-weds Nick and Laura are in. The latter couple speaks little, unlike Mel and Terri, but demonstrate their love through non-verbal actions: Nick touches and kisses Laura’s hand and strokes her “warm thigh,” and they bump legs under the table. In positioning Nick and Laura as a couple sustained through physical connection alone, the story brings forth the question whether their love is, in fact, enduring. Nick regards his partner as “easy to be with” (129), which suggests that their marriage may not work if Laura were more confrontational like Terri.

In contrast, there are discernible underlying tensions between Mel and Terri. She places a warning hand around her husband’s wrist because she thinks he is drinking too much, quite different from the way that Nick affectionately “encircle[s]” and holds Laura’s wrist. Terri also criticizes her husband’s use of English, which irritates him: “They were called vassals, not vessels” (135). They are less affectionate with one another and rarely touch. Instead, Mel fingers the ice in his glass, and Terri rubs the tablecloth. They only use physical expression to mask their irritation and maintain a superficial cordiality, such as when they meet halfway to kiss across the table. Although Mel adamantly rejects Ed’s actions as expressions of love, his own actions mirror volatility. He harbors the violent fantasy of killing his ex-wife and becomes increasingly caustic toward Terri. Mel is audibly self-assured about what love is not, yet he is unable to reconcile the true nature of love. At the end of the story, no definition can be agreed upon. Everyone has their own interpretation, with Mel declaring, “We are all beginners at love” (131). In omitting a clear definition of love, Carver suggests that there is no one correct interpretation. Rather, everyone views love through the lens of their experiences, and all perspectives are valid.