Week 1, Question 3

Nikole Neiberger
Ms. Amy Bolaski
English 103
24 June 2009

3) Does the selection you chose challenge the definition/beliefs you have about romantic love? How so? Does it correspond to your definition/beliefs? How so?

In Raymond Carver’s story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” there are definitely aspects that reinforce my philosophies on love. Passionate love is dangerous by nature. The intensity of having experienced such love is difficult to compare to the comfortable love that most of us settle into. There is much less risk in a domesticated quiet love in comparison to the loves of our youth when we feel love or love unrequited may kill us. In many ways those loves do kill us, because how can we say we are the same person we were before we loved another? There is truth in saying all lovers have left evidence of their presence in our souls. Pieces of our lovers haunt our thoughts and hearts. Although there may be some paths we may say we would never travel again; the internal roads are already paved.
In the initial paragraph the narrator quickly introduces his friend Mel, who is a cardiologist. His occupation is one of the first things introduced to us about Mel, perhaps because the narrator wants us to see him as accomplished and responsible. The narrator then introduces the people in the room as himself, his wife, and Mel’s second wife, Teresa. He finishes the paragraph with the line “But we were all from somewhere else”. This choice of statement combined with the fact that Mel is old enough to have been married twice lends the reader to conclude there is a deep cauldron of experiences that is being brought to the table. The participants in this story have experienced other lovers besides the ones that now accompany them.
The story quickly becomes a discussion between Mel and his second wife Teresa, also referred to as Terri. Terri tells of Ed whom she described as “the man she lived with before she lived with Mel”. Terri then describes a scene where Ed beat her, then follows up with the statement, “What do you do with love like that?” The most political correct thing a person can say is get away and file domestic violence charges immediately. However, that is the uninvolved scientific answer. That answer gives no relevance to love sometimes being similar to the theory of relativity, in the sense that the mass, energy, and momentum of those two people’s love at that particular moment in their lives collided in a way that prove to be toxic. Toxic love is no less powerful, memorable, or educational than healthy love and often times is much more difficult to put behind you.
As Mel and Terri hash out whether or not what she experienced with Ed is love, Terri makes the statement, “It may sound crazy to you, but it’s true just the same. People are different, Mel. Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy. Okay. But he loved me. In his own way maybe, but he loved me. There was love there. Mel, don’t say there wasn’t.” She is really pleading with Mel not to discredit what that relationship meant to her at that time. Her pleading indicates she may have been very young when involved with Ed or perhaps came from an abusive upbringing where such actions were indicative of love. Obviously Terri progressed into a healthier love pattern with Mel but her experiences with Ed were probably an important part of the journey that allowed her to love and appreciate Mel the way she does. Love is passionate and raw at times. Love is impossible to be easily interpreted by an uninvolved party.