I am of the belief that love lives on the other side of earnestness. It may elicit a shudder, but this philosophy was imbued within me as a born romantic, who grew up seeing love, being fascinated with love and consuming love in media (I declared When Harry Met Sally my favourite movie at 12 years old, my heart soaring during Harry’s New Year speech). This was only further affirmed when, aged 17, I first read the aptly named All About Love by the philosopher, social critic and educator bell hooks. My world broke open.
All About Love explores the subject in all its facets – familial, romantic, communal and self-love – with incisive thought and wit while remaining grounded in tenderness. Within it, bell teaches that “we cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts.” In other words, love demands bold honesty.
The text became a thesis of sorts to my life and my work. The clear-eyed but compassionate way it excavates a topic reified my own personal philosophies and convicted me in my pursuit of writing about love in fiction. The best fiction, I feel, is rooted in a truth about humanity, and All About Love clarified a truth I held dear: “that love is expansive, multi-dimensional and an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action.” Loving is easy, but maintaining that love is a necessary and meticulous effort. “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic,” she writes. Lessons that remain relevant today.
The necessity of vulnerability in love may be a wild notion to confront in a modern world where romance seems to be gamified into a power tussle, where whoever replies first loses, and where hearts on sleeves are tucked into cuffs disguised as the odd ‘fire’ emoji on a story (which, I would like to state, truly means nothing. Bend to your knees in the rain outside my girl’s window if you’re really about it!) Deep connection seems to have been lost in a flurry of likes and prolonged talking stages. In my novel Sweet Heat, protagonist Kiki Banjo laments that if she is asked what her favourite colour is again, she will start saying “Black, like her heart”. This may or may not have been based my own ennui from when I was single.
It is easy to accept dating horror stories as the totality of the experience; a bleak certainty. Yet there is – as bell teaches us, another side to this romantic coin.
Despite their treachery, these dating streets still deserve our precious, soft earnestness. Why? Because, simply put, real love demands it. “Many of us choose relationships of affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer. The demands are not as intense as loving requires,” bell writes. “Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love,” she says. A relationship can never reach its full loving capacity if our hearts are not open.
Loving is easy, but maintaining that love is a necessary and meticulous effort
Our (understandable) hesitancy creates an inherent conflict with our basic human desire for connection. There is a reason why romance is the highest grossing and most popular fiction genre in the publishing industry. Why everyone is down bad for Shane and Ilya, and why every five years there is a remake of the mother of the romcom, Pride & Prejudice. In All About Love, bell insists that: “everyone wants to know more about love. We want to know what it means to live.”
As a romance author, the most common reaction I receive from readers is how wonderful it is, that my main characters see each other; how powerful is to be known and to seek to know. The ease I feel with my closest friends and with my partner, for example, is only possible because of the bared hearts between us. bell herself proclaims that, “as long as we are afraid of risk, we cannot know love.” Our fears are nothing new. In 1999, she noted that “Youth culture [...] is cynical about love. And that cynicism has come from the pervasive feeling that love cannot be found.” In 2026, it is easy to see how this might have worsened. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which people have developed a barbed layer of irony and detachment from the idea of love.
As ever, bell appears to have the answer: this can only be combatted when we radically embrace two things. That true love will always carry an innate risk, and love thrives within hope, “the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair.” I wrote this concept into my second book, Honey & Spice. My jaded protagonist Kiki Banjo is unable to accept bountiful love because she has let past experiences obscure the idea. Through self-love – something bell says is the “foundation of our loving practice” – she is able to realise can happen for her, too.
Like Kiki, hope opens us all up to the possibility of connection. Once you find it, you have to be ready to show yourself in all your dimensions: the ‘good’, your flaws, your history, your desires – and we must “willingly hear the other’s truth” in return.
Ironically, when I met my husband, I thought I knew all about love. Ha. The thought that I, a romance author and an ardent student of the subject wasn’t an expert, was a frankly offensive thought. Yet, it was only when I made a conscious effort, with his tender readiness, to trust him with all of my hard edges and uncultivated parts that I unlocked a new dimension of our love. How else would I have known how he knows how to regulate my chaotic nervous system with a sentence or two and a kiss on a forehead? Or that I was, in fact, slightly (slightly) avoidant and his method of discussing issues head-on would lead to my own emotional strengthening? Within a true and honest love, you can both bloom.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t use wisdom upon entry; that we shouldn’t be aware of those who may use our hearts for play. As bell cautions: “to love someone is not just a strong feeling. It is a decision, it is a judgement.” That is where the earnestness I speak so highly of comes in – and transforms into a kind of defiance: “When we choose to love,” bell claims, “we choose to move against fear – against alienation and separation.”
This is true in whichever way you find it, whether it be in a guy who asks you for a drink in a bar, or someone with whom conversation seems to click in an app. Love will always demands an openness; it is only soulless if you make it so. In one of my favourite passages, bell says, “The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame.”
The only ‘how’ that matters is not if you meet digitally or in real life, but whether you approach the possibility of connection with the tenderness that lies on the other of side of obstinate hope and honesty. That we have the boldness to show our light to one another and allow someone the opportunity to find beauty within it.
3 Works By bell hooks To Get You Started
All About Love
Love 101, in all its dimensions. It is a great starting point to explore and question ourselves, our personal histories and our approach to love – not just romantically, but holistically. I find it is also a great way to learn how to write about something beautiful and thorny in a way that is clear and relatable.
Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women And Feminism
A formative part of my understanding of intersectional feminism. Through using her framework as a Black woman in America, I found it clarified so many of the gripes I had found with mainstream feminism. I found a home here and it opened up my world.
Feminist Theory: From Margin To Center
Creating the framework “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, bell dissects how these systems of domination thrive on and reinforce one another. Understanding these systems of oppressions empowers us to resist.
This article is part of On Connection, Service95’s special issue in partnership with Bumble. Discover all the stories here.
