In “What we talk about when we talk about love”. Carver wanted his audience to notice what he thought and experienced in relation to love. The realism of this work, mixed with the basic knowledge of the mind from which it came, reveals that it was not only known, it was felt. Carver was in the shoes of Ed, Mel, and the narrator, gaining experience and forming opinions about what love really meant to him. Knowing that it was written in the same time frame as his commitment to sobriety could mean that this piece of literature offered him clarity, clarity that allows the audience a window into his world. From what has been read, people can infer that Carver believes that love can be both simple and confusing in the same case, that love and pain are inalienable, regardless of whether they are felt by the same person or not, and that love is ambiguous and that the interpretation must be made by the person who feels