In the short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" by Raymond Carver, the discussion of love and the nature and relationships of the four characters reflect the same issues, the same ideas, and the same difficulties. The discussion has the aura of something that is repeated over and over, as if these four talk about love often. They clearly know one another very well and know all about each other's loves, past and present, yet they still talk about them and their feelings endlessly, as if doing so enables them to understand those feelings and themselves.
The central question raised is what constitutes love, and this is raised in terms of how certain actions and behaviors might claim to be love but really cannot be. That, at least, is Mel's point of view when Terri talks about the man she lived with before: "Terri said the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her" (256). Mel takes umbrage at this characterization: "That's not love, and you know it" (256). Terri's description of what the man did to her is especially brutal, but all the while the man continued saying that he loved her even as he beat her and dragged her around the room. Underlying this talk is a certain tension between Mel and Terri that emerges in what they say about each other and what they think about this former boyfriend. Terri is indulgent with him and also understands that love may take some odd forms, while Mel pretends that love has only one definition and one manifestation, though he himself shows that this is not the case.
Throughout, Nick and Laura serve as the surrogate example of ideal love. They are the newlywed, and Mel and Terri both see them as still being in love in a way that people who have been together longer are not. Mel in particular takes the view that love never lasts, and he suggests different ways we should know this--when our loved one dies, we do find another; when a...