We Asked Alanis Morissette Fans For Love Advice

Love messes you up. It chokes your insides and makes you into the sort of person who reads “How to give great head” listicles on WikiHow. You start leaving eyebrow pencil on when they sleep at yours because you don’t want to startle them with your Mrs Potato no-makeup face in the morning. When you make them dinner you try hard, actually buying fresh basil instead of the dried herbs that come out the shaker.

But then it ends – because it usually does – and everything hurts so much you start Googling “Is it possible to die from heartbreak?” and find out the answer is yes, yes it is, because it says so in a VICE article. Every time you close your eyes you see the image of their cute butt as they put their underwear back on after sex. Then you download Tinder and cry into the endless carousel of basics with cry-laughing emojis in their bio and realise you are truly doomed.

When you have reached this low, there’s only one thing you can do and that is listen to the high priestess of heartbreak: Alanis Morissette. She’s the musical equivalent of eating a fat tub of raspberry ripple ice cream at 2AM. When you’re streaming with tears at the wheel of your Fiat Punto, you can play your scratched Jagged Little Pill CD and wail along: “It’s like RAYAYAAINNNNNN” until you are literally screaming with catharsis.

Alanis Morissette is basically the Oprah of getting dumped. As such, it stands to reason that her fans would have absorbed some of the lessons she has learned. With that in mind, I headed over to her gig at the Eventim Apollo to ask these fans for some love advice because I’m bored of getting screwed over and I bet you are too.

Noisey: Do you have any love advice?
Kate: You must find authenticity within yourself to be able to truly love anyone else.

Are you in love with anyone now?
No, apart from myself, I love her. Or at least that’s something I’m working on. I go to a lot of retreats and try to reconnect with my inner child. I don’t need anyone else to complete me.

Is there anything you wish you could have told your 12-year-old self about love before you went through lots of inevitable trauma?
Don’t think love is doing things you shouldn’t do – drugs, alcohol, or any self-destructive behaviour. When I was younger I would put myself in dangerous situations for people I loved. I was having lots of fun, but looking back I was doing those things because I was being led there and not because it was actually what I wanted to do.

Is love more about being comfortable?
Yes, lots of baths.

What’s the best way to get over heartbreak?
Practice self-love.

Masturbate a lot.
Well, for me it’s about finding something I really enjoy doing: Swimming, singing, holistic workshops, gigs, being with friends and honouring myself.

Noisey: Do you have any good love advice, guys?
Nicola: Let the other person be free, that’s an Alanis quote actually. She sings it in “You Owe Me Nothing in Return.” Don’t be texting your partner asking where they are all the time. It’ll give them The Ick.
Jed: I would be the one taking the advice – I still haven’t found love. You meet someone and think it is love but it was always just an obsession. I’m so naïve. I imagine you know the feeling when it comes, although what do I know? I’ve never been in a relationship that has lasted longer than seven months. You get all these ideas and then you get your heart smashed up.

What’s the best way to get over heartbreak?
Nicola: Throw yourself into other stuff – but not food. You need to be so busy that the image of them in the back of your head gets pushed further and further away.
Jed: Exercising helps, shoving those weights around thinking “I don’t care if he doesn’t message me back” (bordering on terrifying arm movements).

Is there anything you wish you could have told yourself about love when you were younger?
Nicola: Keep something back for yourself. I don’t mean be guarded, just always have yourself at your centre. Some dignity you know? You don’t have to let that other person fully devour you.

So don’t poo with the door open?
No, but that too. If the relationship is dying, accept that, don’t keep clinging on.

Noisey: Do you have any good love advice?
Sarah: Be patient. I managed long distance for three years. I met my husband when I was travelling in Mexico and he was my Couchsurfing host. Nothing happened, but I really fancied him. A year later he was meant to come to England but he wasn’t able to transit through the US and was sent back. I decided to go and see him last minute but I booked the wrong ticket and ended up in America. A year later he finally made it over to England and proposed and we got married. Now we live together and he’s very difficult so I have to be patient. We argue about loading the dishwasher, but I’m glad he’s there to argue with.
Ellen: I was worried. They had this grand romance and I thought: how’s it going to be when you’re arguing about who has to take the bins out?
Sarah: The dishwasher saved our marriage.

That sounds like an ITV docu-series (do commission if you’re listening). Do you guys have any good love advice?
Ellen: The whole “it turns up when you are least expecting it” is true. I was resigned to being single forever – I identified with that. But now I’ve been with my boyfriend for five years. It wasn’t love at first sight. We just clicked and I couldn’t stop wanting to see him because he was so much fun to hangout with.
Sarah: And he made you olive tapenade…
Ellen: That too. Find a man who cooks.

How do you get over heartbreak?
Ellen: I’ve never had my heart broken by a boy, only a best friend. She cut contact and that was the worst because friends are supposed to be there forever. But you only need people in your life who want to be in your life.

Noisey: Do you have any good love advice?
Roxy: Always try to understand and work through things together. Nothing is perfect and it’s not supposed to be. You just need the patience and the willingness to work through things together and then you will have a very pleasant journey.

Do you love each other?
Roxy: Yes! Oh my god! This is my best friend ever! She’s the most generous, kind hearted person ever and she doesn’t even need to try. I love her parenting, Bambi is a mum of two kids and they’re the most honest children I know. To raise kids who are always so considerate, who think “I will share my food because I have more at home”, to see that from a seven year old is amazing.
Bambi: Roxy is always so kind. She’s my biggest fan. For her it’s so easy to speak all these words and I’m like – I just think Roxy is amazing.

Where did you both meet?
Bambi: We met through sober early morning raves. Then Roxy lived with me for a while when she didn’t have anywhere to go. I always say to Roxy she’s the one person that never gets on my nerves and people always get on my nerves. I was about to say “apart from my children” but they definitely annoy me.

How do you get over heartbreak?
Roxy: I’m actually still trying to. I had a really bad heartbreak in January when my ex was emotionally abusive and physically violent toward me. I was giving all of myself to him and neglecting who I was. I would say turn to your friends; they will be there for you to tell you that you matter and that you deserve love. When you wonder “was I at fault?” and “I miss him”, they’ll remind you that you’re better than that. Sometimes people get blinded by love and you need those that you trust to help you see again. Bambi really saved my life, I was feeling suicidal. A lot of people say that with time I will realise he was narcissistic. I don’t see it now but maybe one day when I’m more healed I will. I owe a lot to my friends in terms of carrying my head high and gracefully letting go.

Noisey: Do you have any good love advice?
Vicky: When you’re getting together think about the way you want to structure your relationship for the rest of your life. Be unapologetically you because there’s no point getting into a relationship with someone who believes you’re someone else because they might think the real you is a prick. Like it or lump it – I am loud. We have been together 16 years so it must work.

When you got together did she sit you down and lay out the blueprint? Listen up fool: this is how it is going to go.
Brad: Pretty much.

How did you meet?
Brad: At 'Talk' nightclub in Southend-on-Sea.
Vicky: But we did know each other a bit before that because he was the brother of my team leader at work.
Brad: She worked at the cinema.
Vicky: And he would come in and I would eye him up.

So what happened at the nightclub?
Brad: I was following her around all night but I couldn’t talk to her because I didn’t have the guts and then she spoke to me. It was great.
Vicky: Because I was really drunk.

How do you get over heartbreak?
Vicky: I don’t really believe in heartbreak because if it doesn’t work out, it’s not supposed to. Think about what you’ve learned from that relationship because then you can turn into the sort of person you want be when you meet Mr Right.

Is there anything you wish you could have told your teenage self about love?
Brad: Don’t be such a try hard.
Vicky: Are you talking to me?

Noisey: I have already met one other spiritual healer and someone into holistic therapy and you all have this patchwork hippie bag. Do you have any love tips in there?
Laura: I love everyone, the tube driver, the ice cream man, the ticket touts, everyone, all of humanity.

Do you love me?
Yes I love you.

Who do you love more, me or Alanis?
I love everyone.

Noisey: How do you get over heartbreak?
Beverley: There isn’t a way. It just stings so much but all you can do is wait and then one day you will wake up and look into the mirror and be brushing your teeth and you will realise you haven’t thought about them for two hours and two hours will become three and eventually you just won’t give a fuck. Although you will still get your lip gloss out when they walk in the same room as you – you still need to prove you are doing life better than them.

Noisey: What is love?
Sam: When I was a teenager I grew my hair down to my hips just for Alanis.

(Walks into the distance with no further comments, perhaps the most profound expression of love bar Love Island’s Jack and Dani drinking prosecco on a picnic blanket saying “I proper love you ya’know, like proper”.)

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