In January 2023, my long-term relationship ended abruptly, six months after we had bought our first home together. I was about to turn 38 and my life had fallen apart – and with it, the future I had envisioned for myself. Marriage, children. The person with whom I thought I would grow old. In an instant, it was gone. What would I do now?
Well, after a year of “finding myself”, like any good millennial woman who read Eat Pray Love at a formative age would do – yes, there was a wellness retreat in Thailand, ayahuasca, and past life regression involved – at the start of 2024, I decided to do that which scared me the most. I decided to go back on the dating apps. As I downloaded Hinge and Bumble, sure I was going to be bombarded with unsolicited d*ck pics and incels asking what my body count was, I decided to go to my dad, the wisest man I know, for advice. I don’t want to do this, I told him, by which I meant I’m scared. I’m afraid I will get hurt again. I don’t know if I could survive that. And he said to me, “Lou, if you want a bigger life, then you have to take bigger risks.”
I’m not sure if what happened next was quite what he had in mind. I travelled from Paris to London to New York to Rome. I was kissed under the Eiffel Tower and on top of the Empire State Building. I had a man fly into Ireland to take me on our first date, and I watched as another checked under his car to see if a terrorist organisation had planted explosives there. I met the most fascinating people and I collected some incredible stories but most importantly, I learned so much about myself. I saw the ways in which I had kept myself small for all these years, sometimes to please others but often to protect myself. If I didn’t admit what I really wanted, then I couldn’t be disappointed if I didn’t get it.
So yes, this memoir follows my dating experiment across different cities and countries, but really, it’s about desire in a much greater sense. Desire for freedom, reinvention, ambition, joy, sex. Desire for a life that feels fully lived. A Bigger Life is about rebuilding yourself after heartbreak, but it’s also about questioning who you might become if you stopped living according to other people’s expectations. And ultimately, asking: what does a bigger life actually look like for each of us?
– Louise O’Neill
