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Falling in love is wonderful. Unfortunately falling out of love is part of it too. That is painful.
From the day we are born we must progressively learn who we are and how we are separate from others. Development of a healthy person from baby to adolescent is a continuous process of learning how to be separate and independent (see Nancy Friday's book ‘My Mother My Self’ for a most readable discussion of this). This process of learning to be independent is called differentiation.
When we fall in love and add sex to our interpersonal relationships it is usual to feel a sense of fulfilment or completion, and it is often the case that lovers approaching marriage view this as two halves coming together to complete a whole. In some senses this is true.
It is however an inappropriate model for a long term relationship. A person who feels that his or her happiness depends on the approval or support of their spouse is not a well differentiated adult, but is symbiotic and dependent on that other person.
Being responsible for ourselves means learning what it is that we want for ourselves, as a separate individual. This is not being selfish, it is simply being honest. We are selfish if we demand what we want without regard for others. Knowing what we want of ourselves, of each other and of our relationship enables us to be involved in that relationship as an equal and to fully respond to our partner.
When we find (for whatever reason) that our relationship has ended, a well differentiated person may be bitterly saddened by the loss but is not destabilised. My understanding of the things that matter does not change if my partner dies or leaves me. If my confidence in myself – my sense of my own worth – is based on knowledge of my own characteristics it is not overturned by the loss of my beloved.
These are difficult things to learn, and many people never do. Many people are deeply fearful of the loss of their lover (and many will deny this – denying their own vulnerability) as their confidence in their own self depends on that other person. It is common that we do not learn this until we are forced to.
Until we have a lover leave us we may blithely believe that we are much more independent than we really are. This delusion is dangerous. Thus the pain of separation and the loss of love are terrible experiences but may in the long run help us discover the truth about ourselves and enable us to be better lovers and more useful partners.
Tennyson wrote ‘It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ True enough. Samuel Butler adapted that to ‘It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all.’ In many ways Butler's parody is truer. We cannot really love until we understand how to put ourselves at risk – to know what we can stand losing because we have previously done so. If I am afraid of loss I will put little at risk, and so the symbiotic or dependent person will never venture deeply into love.
What we can risk – what we can stand losing – is very much more than the symbiotic and dependent person can ever conceive, but we must be adequately strong in ourselves to be able to do so. Losing may be the only way we can prove this strength to ourselves.
About half of all love songs and poems are about the pain of losing. Such bitter pain, but what exquisite pleasures grow from it.
Peter Hoban
Original: December 2000
this page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.tassie.net.au/~phoban/
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