Relationships • Breaking Up & Heartbreak
In Love, Happiness May Need to Be Paid for in Agony
There is nothing more natural, at the start of love, than to seek out happiness. We scan a map and plot where we might go later in the summer. A weekend here. A rental house there. Or what about a special time near…? We long to create memories, isolate beauty, enjoy our senses: a fish place by the river, an Italian hilltop town, a Belgian art gallery. We invite restaurant owners, shopkeepers and museum curators to delight us. Half the commerce of the world is about decorating the early days with joy – blissful moments that may one day deepen the pain after a breakup.
The Hidden Cost of Beautiful Beginnings
But if we are experienced at love, we know a darker truth. If love were ever to go wrong, these would be the centres of agony.
When a relationship collapses, it isn’t the painful bits that we ever focus on. We don’t lament that we argued. We don’t cry that there was a hideous scene of jealousy outside the museum. We aren’t furious that they constantly misunderstood our relationship to our brother. All of this has been paid for already. It’s old news.
What surges forward is something unexpected: the beautiful bits. The trip to the hills. The hotel room in Rio. The jacket we found for them in the little shop by the winding alleyway in Seville. The funfair in Helsinki.
We thought all these things had been laid to rest, that their recollection served no further function. But some nostalgic demon inside us insists on going to explore each one in ghastly detail.
And so, a wariness may befall us as a new relationship builds: by all means, let’s do the lovely things. Let’s not avoid the picnic in the park. Let’s book the holiday to the islands. But there is also a suspicion and a fear: a Greek island, again …? Another trip to a gallery? Dare we really risk doing this? Dare we stop the car and suggest a swim in a lake, take a picnic blanket and go and buy cheese and bread from a farmer? Can we truly bear the cost if things were to go wrong, if they were to cool, if six months or years from now, they said they needed some space or wanted to pursue a job in another country?
Understanding the Pain After a Breakup
There is no pleasure that isn’t an emotional catastrophe in waiting. There is no delightful moment that we won’t know how much we’ll have to suffer for until the end. The pain after a breakup is always rooted in joy. Call no lover happy till they die.
