The Heartbreak Issue — Plus, Dolly Alderton's 9 Favorite Things
The English author shares how to help a heartbroken friend and the best place to cry in public. Plus, would you ever get a breakup haircut?
Hello! How’s your week going? This week, we’re talking about heartbreak. First up, I chatted on the phone with Dolly Alderton, the funny English author who has written a lot about relationships and breakups. Here’s our Q&A…
Your hilarious new novel, Good Material, follows a man named Andy as he goes through a bad breakup. Was Andy based on a real guy? He’s completely made up, but I interviewed lots of men about their past breakups. I also wanted to show the comedy and tragedy of someone, particularly a man of Andy’s generation and background, feeling like they have to present as a functioning person when inside everything is falling apart.
My heterosexual guy friends often tell me they wish they could discuss their feelings with their male friends. They all express that same desire, but actually doing it seems very hard for them. I’ve written so much about the intimacy of female relationships. We share the gnarliest, deepest stuff. My friends and I will talk and talk and talk our way out of heartbreak, until we finally get bored or join enough dots to find peace with what happened. If I didn’t have that, I’d still be strung out on a man from 2006.
Writing this book was a great creative exercise. How do male friends show up for each other? Because, while the men that I spoke to said they didn’t feel comfortable enough to talk about their emotional processes with other men, every single one of them also said that they had loads of male friends that they’d die for and loved deeply.
Yes, and no matter who you are, your brain plays tricks on you during a breakup. It’s hard for the person and hard for their friends. Someone I know just went through a difficult breakup, and watching them go through it breaks your heart but is also maddening. They keep scavenging to find some answer or resolution, but ultimately it’s a futile quest. I had a bit of a moan about this to another friend, and she said, Well, yeah, and we did it for you a few years ago, and this is what we do for each other. To be in a state of heartbreak is to be in a state of grief, and to be in a state of grief is to be in a state of madness. We become shocked by the depths of our own self absorption in the wake of unrequited love. Everyone gets their turn.
Here, Dolly shares 9 of her favorite things…
Simple pleasures: Rain, full stop. I love the sound of it, I love the smell of it, it’s very soothing. And when my cat, Goldie Hawn, is happy to see me, she rolls on her back and lets me rest my head on her soft, downy tummy. A cat’s purr changes my chemical make up, it’s like ASMR.
Flower: There’s something so romantic about roses. Plus, roses are the only flower that doesn't make my cat sick. Honestly, that’s why I love cats: they’re so neurotic, everything stresses them out, everything makes them ill. They’re layered and human. It’s an energy I can connect to. I love dogs but there’s no nuance with a dog.
TV shows: In England, January through April is the most horrendous torture — just a gray sky every single day — so it’s prime for TV watching. I just finished The Traitors. Everyone here is talking about it like a religion, like going to church. I missed the finale and texted all my friends: PLEASE don’t talk about the finale. But then I went on Instagram and saw photos of the finalist. There isn’t a moment of sorrow in my life that is comparable to how sad I was that day.
Snack: I always, always have Walkers crisps in the house. I’ve actually never met a form of potato I haven’t been affectionate toward.
