When We Talk About Love Analysis

Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. In Raymond Carver’s, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” the idea of love is discussed from multiple points of view. When you think about love, your definition of love is vastly different from mine or anybody else's. Love is the most powerful emotion you can feel, thus your individual perception as to what love entails is personally fitted to you and nobody can tell you different.
In the story, Mel is introduced with his current wife, Terri, sitting around a table drinking gin and tonic with their two guests: Nick and Laura, who are a year and a half into their marriage. Somehow the couples get on the topic of love which reveals that the characters have a very different definition
Terri explains to Nick and Laura that the man she was with, before Mel, loved her so much he tried to kill her (Carver 304). The way Terri describes her ex, and his love for her, shows us that Terri’s perception is blinded by her love for Ed. Mel tells us that when Ed tried to commit suicide and was in the hospital in critical condition, Terri still wanted to see him and be by his side, leading the reader to believe that even though she was involved in an abusive relationship, she still has wool pulled over her eyes and can’t see the danger in this man. Mel often would criticize his wife’s opinion on her view of love by telling her that the love she thought Ed felt towards her wasn’t real, “My God, don’t be silly. That’s not love, and you know it” (Carver 304). When the author of, “The Middle Years: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” addresses Terri’s previous relationship, he bring to the table the fact that, “Terri’s continuing insistence that what Ed felt was love only serves to anger Mel, and we begin to see signs of strain in their own relationship” (Meyer 22). This goes to show that Mel’s and Terri’s definition of love tends to clash a little bit. Ewing Campbell, who wrote, “Breakthrough: ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’,” goes as far as to elaborate on Terri’s past experiences and to show the reader exactly how Terri feels toward Ed while agreeing with my
She says Ed loved her so much he tried to kill her. Terri's interpretation of such evident ambivalence agrees with Ed's--it is love. That an individual deems his life not worth living without her must seem to her the highest testimony of her value. That Ed might have killed himself as one last attempt to punish her or that he might have taken his life as an act of self-loathing is unacceptable to Terri.