Could you ever trade in the comfort of security for the grief of hope?

This question sways the branches of Fleabag and the Hot Priest’s relationship in season two. They dance around each other. At times, they lean in, only to hide behind the wall of ‘forbidden’ when it starts to feel more real.

Love is fickle, but also a choice. Even so, how can you decide between something that feels right and something unyielding?

For Fleabag, love is fleeting and unequal.

For the Hot Priest, love means giving up his life’s meaning.

Love is much more complex than a simple feeling, so analyzing the love portrayed in Fleabag requires more nuance than the standard ‘will they, won’t they’ query. Which brings me back to the titular question of this post: What defines a successful love story? Is it marriage? Is it a grand gesture? Or, is it a quiet rejection at a bus stop? For our beloved heroine, the latter might just be the answer.

Her grief becomes her

To understand how Fleabag loves, it is important to first understand her grief. To grieve is to burn. It is isolating and overwhelming.

Grief is a dark cavern extending far beyond what the eye can see, with walls that grow narrower with each mile. It is the pressing ache on your chest as the oxygen begins to run out, and each breath feels more painful than the last. It is the carefully placed rock in the middle of your path that causes you to trip and graze your knees. It is the despair that traps you on the ground, and the guilt that forces you back to your feet. But, most of all, grief is the blood that trails the procession.

Love is always different to those who have lost. It loses its novelty. It begins to feel more like a means to an end.

If the end of season one marks the beginning of Fleabag accepting the need to grieve, season two shows the desire to open herself up again. Season two starts with a dramatic dinner party where Fleabag is completely alienated. Claire, her sister who typically acts as her reprieve, is angry with her. So, she sits in the restaurant, ignored until she is ridiculed. The only person to acknowledge her as something other than a joke is this Hot Priest, whom she has never met before. He addresses her directly and shows an innocent interest in her that she had not felt in a long time.

That brief glimpse of warmth fanned the few embers left of her flame. It showed her that she was still worthy of simple acts of kindness.

After the dinner, she sought him out and made a connection with him. It is important to understand that, at this time, her only true friend was her sister, with whom she was not on speaking terms. Throughout the show, she never made any moves to form noteworthy bonds with another person, only brief trysts. Fleabag seeking companionship with the Hot Priest is groundbreaking for her.

All of their meetings hold a heavy romantic tension. Their eyes latch onto each other, and their words form pretty pictures of flirtation. But that is not the only significance of their relationship. The Hot Priest puts in effort to see her, to understand all of her idiosyncrasies. He holds out his hand to her rather than demand to fix her. The perfect example of this is when he asks where she goes when she breaks the fourth wall.

He pays attention. He cares for her presence rather than her potential.

Fleabag still carries the feeling of guilt that her love is destructive, so she sequesters herself and hides behind the masks of quirky and/or flirty. The Hot Priest, gazing through the masks, shows her that there is still a person behind them. The time skip between season one and two taught her to develop respect for herself, but the Hot Priest’s gentle regard gives her permission to view herself fondly.

But if this relationship is positive, why would a show about growth make it so brief?

To be loved, teaches how to love

Losing someone chips away at your perception of the world. Everything changes; things that once felt important become utterly irrelevant, and time feels like it slips between the cracks of your fingers. But I think the hardest part of losing someone is learning to love again.

Fleabag didn’t need a love that was written in the stars. All she needed was a door opened. Deep down, the priest knew that too.

When watching the show, I kept asking myself: would Fleabag still desire the Hot Priest if she knew, undoubtedly, that she would be his choice? There is a sort of safety net in love that is forbidden. It is like seeing a lion in a zoo. You can approach, but you know that there is an impenetrable fence separating you. Fleabag needed to see the lion and to hear the lion’s roar to know that it’s real, but she’s not quite ready to push past the fence and greet it. Learning to love again comes with very small steps; the first of those is to allow yourself to feel loved. Fleabag is nowhere near ready for romance, but she is ready to connect with her sister. She is ready to let herself love again without the fear of irreparably breaking something.

I believe that love is alive and unique to every person, but I think that it is silly to measure it only by the longevity of a relationship. There is nothing more beautiful than a love that begets more love. I think that this quote encapsulates this idea.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu

Opening her world to the Hot Priest gave Fleabag the courage to repair her relationship with her sister. It gave her the tools to support Claire in her own journey to loving again. The real love story of season two was always between Fleabag and Claire.

Final thoughts

“I love you.”

“It’ll pass.”

These quotes will haunt me until the end of time, but they are so hauntingly beautiful. There is something so human about an imperfect love. It gives me hope that a love so profound can exist in such small pockets of time. Well, it makes me feel equal parts hopeful and devastated.

I saw a lot of discourse online about whether or not this type of love is one to avoid. I’d love to hear your opinions!

Could you sacrifice the peace of the known for the heartbreak of discovery?