I needed to ask, what would a better way of seeing look like? And how do you move forward when uncertainty tempts you towards cynicism? The answers, I think, are in something the author Sheila Heti told me in an interview when I asked her about the question of whether or not to have children. The important thing, she explained, was not to make the ‘right’ or ‘best’ decision, but ‘to closely bind yourself to whatever you’re living’. She said, ‘You make your life meaningful by applying meaning to it – it’s not just inevitably meaningful as a result of the choices you’ve made.’ We were discussing this in the context of choice, but I think it applies to circumstance too. The romantic relationship or family I wanted would not make my life meaningful; only I could.

On the drive home I thought about how the unknowns of my life I was thrashing against were possibilities too. I looked back on all I did not know as a toddler, as a child, as a teenager; all the wonderful stretches of life ahead. I wondered if the ugliest shade of unhappiness comes, not directly from what you lack, but from wanting a different life to the one you’re living. Perhaps that feeling is not a state of longing after all, but a way of seeing. A choice disguised in a lack of one.

What does it mean to you to be a good friend?

The first thing, I think, is to ask yourself that question. To me it’s about demonstrating love, investing time, having an awareness of people – their history, their desires, what they need. And seeing and accepting the different facets of who they are. It’s also about finding romance in your relationship. I do woo my friends. I tell them how amazing they are because I want them to feel good about themselves. When we end a phone call, I don’t say, ‘Love you, bye,’ I say, ‘I love you.’ When we’re apart, I tell them how much I miss them, and when we’re together, how beautiful they look. I’m big on birthdays too, because I had a work friend who, after I’d had a horrible break-up, took on the role of my boyfriend on my birthday. She knew that no one else was going to plan anything, so she organized a day of nice things. We still do that for each other’s birthdays: plan an itinerary of things and spend the day looking after the other person. Little rituals show someone that their friendship is important to you.

Speaking to Candice made me think Alain de Botton was right: it is a tragic misalignment, how we’ve relegated friendship to a lesser form of love. Because whether you are in a relationship or not, friends have access to parts of you that no one else does. How, then, do you pull friendship back to its rightful position in the hierarchy of love? I think with tiny rituals and reminders. For Candice, that’s planning a birthday itinerary every year. For war reporter Janine di Giovanni, it’s breakfast with a friend on Skype on Sunday mornings, from different countries. For me and Marisa, it’s regular dates in Pizza Express, where we know the menu so well we don’t have to waste any time looking at it. It’s wearing the gold bracelet she once bought with the words ‘May we always dance around the refrigerator light’ engraved on the inside. She gave it to me when we lived just streets away and our lives were intertwined. Now that we don’t live nearby, it’s a reminder to find other ways to close the gap. A small symbol that means, Let’s keep on prioritizing each other.

Bill and I spend a ton of time together, but we accept each other’s limitations every day. Being in a good relationship requires that. There’s always going to be stress on your day-to-day life, which makes it easy to push a partner away. To me, it’s like you build a private religion with another person, and honesty and vulnerability have to be a part of it. You have to revisit what you each need and are afraid of. And tolerating someone else’s vulnerability is a challenge if you’re a tough person. I’m pretty tough, but I still have to encourage my husband to look at how he feels and unpack it, and then be patient with what he finds. He is seven years older than me and loves to complain about his back. I have terrible neck issues too, so I understand, but I don’t complain. The problem is, if you say to yourself, ‘I don’t want to hear about your pain because I don’t complain about mine,’ then that’s the death of love. You have to be tolerant and give the other person what they need. If you don’t do that, it’s easy for both of you to drift into your own worlds and to stop sharing yourselves. There is a callus that’s always threatening to build up, and you have to break it down as a team somehow, again and again.

What advice would you give someone who hasn’t met a partner when they hoped to, and is feeling exhausted by trying to find love?

When you’re in the throes of obsession, there’s a possibility that opens up every second you give up. And it’s not giving up on ever finding a partner, or having a baby, or whatever it is that you want. It’s giving up on trying to control what happens. When you’re trying to manage your obsession around something you want really badly, it’s soothing to try to let go of your sense that it is all up to you to make it happen. It’s easy – as a person who works hard and is smart – to work, work, work at it. But stepping back and getting a little loose around it, and thinking, this is how it’s supposed to be, can make you happier. You’re living inside the romance of longing instead of inside the pain of it. It’s also useful to recognize that intensity doesn’t have to mean sadness, and longing doesn’t have to mean desperation. Longing can actually be a generative stance that’s lovely to feel.

Are you now able to see that, whilst you still want a romantic relationship, it’s not a permanent guarantee of happiness?

That part has absolutely sunk in. There is this idea that if you could just get someone to love you then you would be released from the low rattle of unhappiness. Then you find someone who loves you, and you still feel the rattle of unhappiness. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you. Maybe learning to tolerate that low rattle of unhappiness is part of what reminds you that you’re alive.

As an adult I’ve watched friends marry and divorce. It’s as if I was waiting in a long line, then everybody left the ride and said, ‘That ride sucks.’ But that helped me to understand that the romantic relationship I was yearning for was not going to fix the low rattle of unhappiness. The truth is it’s hard not to have found a relationship and it’s brave to go into a relationship and it’s hard to find one and then to lose it. All of us, at some point, have to learn how to get our hearts broken.