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We’re presented with a fact – they have left us – and onto that we project a meaning. But the meaning we give to the fact comes, in large part, from us.
The lover who furiously told us they never wanted to see us again may, in the hidden recesses of their soul, have actually been thinking: ‘I’m so sad this didn’t work out; I wish I could find a way to make this work; you are so lovely in many ways, but there’s something desperate in me that’s turning away from your offer of love.’ The person who coldly texts us, ‘That’s it, I’m out’ may, behind the scenes, be weeping at their own sense of loss and failure rather than (as we imagine) gleefully celebrating the end of their over-extended encounter with us. The person who says, ‘I wish this could
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There is a conflict – of which we end up the unwitting victims – between what they say they seek in a partner, and what they are in fact psychologically capable of accepting.
Perhaps a beloved parent was rather aloof or often absent in their childhood. When they grew up and began seeking love, the ex may have been drawn to the warmth we offered them, but at the same time, our tenderness would have felt unfamiliar and been perceived as extremely threatening to parts of their personality. They may have struggled to understand what was going on inside themselves when they went cold and had to take their distance from us, but they lacked the tools. It may in the end have felt easier for them to blame us for being ‘needy’ rather than explore the complicated reasons why
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Or maybe our ex had a parent who was rather fragile or depressed, or who was impatient or easily irritated. As a result, they learned to be exceedingly cautious around them, always pleasing and putting others’ interests first – and never quite letting on what was happening in their hearts, growing isolated and resentful instead. They gravitated towards us, hoping that we would allow them to be themselves. But, while we did our best, dynamics kicked in which meant that they never dared to explain their desires to us properly. They hid what really worried them, they buried...
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The standard view is that we seek happiness in love, but what it seems we actually seek is familiarity – which may well complicate any plans we might have for happiness, for we are not always familiar with what is good for us.
As adults, we may then reject potential partners, not because they are wrong, but because they are too well balanced (too mature, too understanding, too reliable), and their rightness feels unfamiliar and somehow oppressive.
A securely attached partner might know how to soothe the situation, but an avoidant one certainly doesn’t. Tragically, this avoidant party triggers every insecurity known to their anxious lover. Under pressure to be warmer and more connected, the avoidant partner instinctively withdraws and feels overwhelmed and hounded. They go cold and disconnect from the situation, only further ramping up their partner’s anxiety. Underneath their silence, the avoidant one resents feeling, as they put it, ‘controlled’; they have the impression of being harassed,
unfairly persecuted and disturbed by the other’s ‘neediness’.
To properly get over the pain of a love rival, we need to realise how mediocre pretty much
every human who has ever existed tends to be. There is not, in fact, ever any such thing as a ‘perfect person’; there are merely differently tricky ones, as our former partner will inevitably learn.
Whatever attractions a new lover can offer our ex, they will also supply them with a whole new set of irritants, which will end up frustrating them as much as we ever did, indeed more so, because they so sincerely hoped – as they packed their bags – that such flaws would not exist in their next partner.
Our ex-lover has not entered the gates of paradise; they have merely exchanged one imperfect relationship for another. We should never compound our grief with the thought that our ex will be uncomplicatedly happy.
It’s that we have been left because of a common delusion: the belief that if only we were in a different relationship, we would be substantially happier.
The lover we need is not someone who stays with us because they think we are irreplaceable, but because they’ve wisely realised that no one is as attractive as they seem at first – and that to destroy a relationship is generally only a prelude to novel encounters with frustration and disappointment.
They’re not saying you are a fool, just that the two of you turn out not to be very compatible partners for each other.
What is the point of thinking about the past? His answer was precise: We should remember only in so far as it actually helps us to live in the present.
To the extent that memories assist us in forming our plans and avoiding error, they are valuable, but when memories function as obstacles to better lives, we should put our energies into the business of forgetting.
When we say we miss them, what we really mean is that it is a set of good qualities and experiences that we are missing.
It is tenderness, conviviality and open-mindedness we love, first and foremost, rather than, inherently, the bodily home in which these qualities came to rest. We encountered these things in and with them and so assume that to lose the person is to lose everything linked to them.
In losing one person, we can’t logically forever have lost contact with the elements that made them valuable – and that continue to exist, scattered throughout humanity.
One of the odder – and more profound – lessons of a broken heart is the eventual realisation that the focus of our love is not really an individual person, but a range of good things which – thankfully – cannot be the unique property of a single person but can be found in other potential partners, waiting for us to be ready to encounter them as soon as we are stronger.
