Our Doomed Love Affairs Are a Series of Lessons

We are used to thinking of the success of love in stark and binary terms: either a relationship ‘worked’ – meaning we were, and stayed, happily together for a long time (possibly to the end) – or else it ‘failed’, leaving us in pain and feeling (more or less) that we wasted our time.

This may be far too punitive a vision. What if we were to shift our consideration away from whether a relationship lasted or not, towards a more salutary and interesting concern: how much we were able to learn about love as a result of an ending? We could come to draw value not just from the longevity and solidity of a bond, but from its capacity to teach us about our emotional needs in the course of its demise.

We might say that behind the collapse of every relationship, there are lessons that could be formulated and absorbed. Whereas we might currently assess a string of failed relationships as simply a mess, we might come to think of them as a storehouse of latent insights into the nature and purpose of love.

Mapping the Curriculum of the Heart

We could reconfigure what our past relationships meant to us by asking ourselves: what were their central lessons? What did each one teach me? We might – on this basis – draw up an educational map of our entire romantic trajectory:

Lessons from M. (age 19–21):

— Never be with someone out of a sense of obligation.

— Get out as soon as you feel you need to. It is never kind to delay.

Lessons from Q (22):

— No begging (ever). Ask a maximum of four times (nicely), then go.

— Someone can be extremely clever and yet emotionally totally obtuse.

From B. (22):

— Careful of people who hide behind a sweet, ultra-polite manner.

— Don’t always take their silence as a sign that they are happy.

— Good sex really matters.

From D (22–34):

— Tell them clearly what you can tolerate – and mean it.

— Be prepared to walk away at any time.

— The most normal-seeming person might withdraw and go mad (because of issues in their deep psyche). Stay vigilant.

— Don’t help anyone too much. 

— You deserve kindness and goodness.

— Guard the citadel.

From P. (37–43):

— Desperation leads to bad choices.

— Acquire an abundance mindset: there are always other people.

— Don’t put up with anyone who isn’t very, very keen. Never persuade.

— There is madness out there; beware mental issues.

Dating (44–50):

— Second impressions are never any better.

— You can and should be polite and elegant when exiting situations.

— Beware the sunk cost fallacy.

— Lack of confidence from childhood has a very long tail.

— Forgive yourself for making every mistake in the book

The Hidden Value of Endings: Lessons to Learn in Love

When we are next sobbing on the sofa or in bed, lamenting the ‘failure’ of another relationship, we should pause and gently ask: what am I able to learn here? What has the disintegration of this connection got to teach me? The collapse is a lesson in disguise. Maybe, on examination, there is a warning about the need not to compromise around sex. Maybe there is something we have to take on board about listening to our gut instinct. Maybe we have to go back and relearn a lesson about never trying to save someone, or about intellect being powerless in the face of emotional pressures.

We might say that the most awful break-ups are, by definition, also those with the richest possible educational material embedded in them. If we can’t (eight months after a break-up) still believe that we have been abandoned, it may only be because we’re failing to pick up (let’s say) a lesson about self-respect, or a module on developing intolerance for excuses.

Turning Tears into Knowledge

We shouldn’t be offended by how simple many of the lessons on love can sound. That it should take five years to learn ‘Listen to your gut’, or a year and a half to learn ‘Set Boundaries’, or six months of agony and chaos to acquire the lesson ‘Give up on people who refuse to listen to you’ may sound silly. But there is an immense difference between how simple a lesson may sound and how vastly complicated it is to grasp properly – that is, to thread it through the details of our lived experience.

The philosopher Schopenhauer proposed that the task of philosophy should be to turn ‘tears into knowledge’. The more we value such knowledge, the less each collapsed relationship needs to be viewed as a waste. It isn’t just agony; it may also be a fascinating and important part of our romantic curriculum.

We can shift our definition of a good lover away from a paragon who has managed to discover their eternal soulmate, to someone who – despite an ongoing degree of pain – never stops learning about the complexities of love. The next time we suffer a romantic reversal, we don’t only need to curse ourselves for our bad luck; we can think that we had a few more lessons to learn in love before we could be left in peace.