Three Sorts of Pain in Heartbreak

We are used to thinking of heartbreak as one thing, a single calamity with a single sort of pain. But anyone who has been through more than one ending knows a stranger truth. Not all unwilling endings hurt the same. There are, on closer inspection, three distinct types of heartbreak. It is worth going through them in ascending order of pain, for what distinguishes them tells us something unexpected about what heartbreak actually is.

Trying but Failing

The first and least painful variety we might call Trying but Failing. This is the relationship that ends because of incompatibilities that cannot, despite everything, be worked through. Crucially, one knows what the issues are. They play too much golf. We need to live abroad. We want a different sort of sex. The problems have names; they have been laid on the table and turned over many times. Two people have tried very hard. They have gone to therapy, they have discussed, they have made concessions and drawn up compromises that held for a season and then quietly collapsed. The relationship unravels slowly, in daylight, with both parties watching. When it finally ends, we are left thinking: it is very sad that it failed but I know why. We were simply too different. There is grief here, sometimes enormous grief, but it is grief with a shape. The mind can rest on a narrative. We suffer but we are not haunted.

The Conscious Fait Accompli

The second level is more painful. We might call it the Conscious Fait Accompli. Here things end but without discussion. They come to us one day with their mind firmly made up. They present us with a resolution, not a question. And by stripping us of agency, this hurts a lot more.

It’s because of our attitude to politics, or our conversational manner or our approach to work. Fair enough, we want to say, but can’t we discuss this first? Can’t we try to improve? But choice has been confiscated. We were tried in absentia and informed only of the verdict. And so we ruminate, endlessly, on an unfairness that is added to missing them: I wish I could have entered their mind before it was set. I wish I could have made my case. The pain here is not only loss; it is exclusion from a doubt about us we wish we could have had a chance to answer.

No Explanation at All

Then there is the third level, the most awful. The person doesn’t tell us why they are leaving. They don’t give us any reasons at all. They may simply block our number or leave the country without letting us have a forwarding address. Or maybe they meet with us but say they are confused, they aren’t able to speak, their minds feel foggy. Alternatively, they may force us to end the relationship by acting so unreasonably that we have no other option. Then we are properly in pain. We have to bear the guilt of having left. And we also have no explanation to argue with, no narrative to rest on. This is the heartbreak that can take years to metabolise, precisely because there is nothing to metabolise: no reason, no account, no farewell, only an absence where an explanation should have been.

What the Three Types of Heartbreak Teach Us

If heartbreak were simply the pain of losing someone, all three endings would hurt equally, for in each case the loss is identical: the person is gone. But they do not hurt equally, not remotely. The differing levels of pain teach us something key about psychology. We are hugely committed to explanations. We want to avoid suffering, of course. But almost up there with this priority is to know why we are suffering.

Given the chaos of the third of these types of heartbreak, in the ideal society, there would be laws against it. Leave someone if you need to. Never – under pain of a considerable fine or a stay in prison – do it without giving them a why. What really breaks the heart is mystery.