Last spring, I was in England. I walked the streets of Bath, where Jane Austen once lived. I stood outside the very buildings she might’ve passed, wandered the same hills, the same gardens. And even though the city has changed, something about it still feels steeped in longing. In restraint. In the quiet ache of everything unsaid.

Maybe that’s when the thoughts started, about love, about whether it’s something we create or discover. About what Jane herself must’ve believed. -Autumn

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Not just romantic love, but the whole idea of it. The sweeping, soul-stirring kind that novels are made of. I’ve been rewatching Pride and Prejudice (again), flipping through its pages, and falling into that familiar world where looks are exchanged across candlelit ballrooms and a walk in the rain could mean everything.

And I can’t help but wonder… does that kind of love actually exist? Or is it a beautiful story we keep telling ourselves because it feels better than silence?

What really gets me is that Jane Austen, who created some of the most iconic love stories of all time, never married. The woman who gave us Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth… spent her life writing about love, but not living it in the conventional way.

That used to make me feel a little heartbroken for her. But now, I’m not so sure. Maybe she knew something we don’t. Maybe writing was her way of living love. Or preserving the version of love she could believe in, on her own terms. Maybe the page was safer than real life. Or maybe she just didn’t meet her own Mr. Darcy (because… how many are out there, really?).

There’s something philosophical about it, isn’t there? Like love, in the truest sense, might not even be about romance. Maybe it’s about longing. About recognizing beauty and connection in fleeting moments. Maybe love is in the tension, the almosts, the words left unsaid.

When I think about Elizabeth and Darcy, I don’t just think about the “happily ever after.” I think about how they earned it, through growth and pride-swallowing and learning to really see each other. Love in Austen’s world isn’t just a feeling. It’s work. It’s humility. It’s timing. And it’s always tangled up in class and expectations and the limitations of being human.

Jane Austen didn’t write fairy tales. She wrote about people trying to find love in an imperfect world. And maybe that’s why it hits so hard. Because we are trying too.

And here’s what I keep coming back to, what I truly think Jane Austen felt about love:

I think she believed in it. Deeply. But not the love that’s easy or pretty. Not the fireworks or the fantasy. She believed in the kind of love you have to grow into. The kind that arrives after you’ve unlearned your pride, faced your own reflection, and found the courage to let someone see you.

She didn’t marry, not because she didn’t want love, but because she wouldn’t settle for anything less than what she gave her characters. She was too smart, too principled, too her to accept anything that wasn’t real.

And that’s the bittersweet part, isn’t it? I think she wanted love deeply. You can feel it in her letters, in the ache between her lines, in the quiet hopes of her characters. But instead of chasing a version that didn’t feel right, she wrote her own. She gave it to Lizzy, to Anne, to Emma. And in doing so, she gave it to us.

Her stories aren’t fantasies. They’re blueprints. For loving clearly, honestly, imperfectly. For choosing someone, and yourself, with eyes wide open.

So maybe love does exist. Just not always how we expect. Maybe it’s quieter. Slower. Less cinematic. Maybe it slips in through the side door when we’re not looking.

Maybe Jane Austen didn’t write about love because she had it.
Maybe she wrote about it because she understood it more than most of us ever will.

And maybe… that’s enough.

Maybe that’s everything.

Autumn