Years ago, a friend of my mother’s told me that one day I ‘wouldn’t even believe that I’d ever been so upset about him’. I was in the throes of my first serious breakup, which I handled badly and I felt completely patronised by and furious with her. My pain was real, I needed to go through it and, eventually, one day, I wouldn’t feel it anymore. That would happen in my own time, on my own terms and the agony of the emotional wounds would eventually heal, leaving scar tissue which still tells the story of that episode and how it made me who I am today.
In Goodbye To All That, which she wrote in 1967, Joan Didion touched on why the pain we feel when we are in our late teens and early twenties is so very acute. ‘One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one’ she said, ‘and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has happened to anyone before.’ Here Joan put what my mum’s friend was trying to say far more lyrically and empathetically.
Your first break up is, paradoxically, the best (in terms of how it makes you the person you’re supposed to become) and the worst (in terms of how utterly awful it makes you feel). I’d argue that this is the time in your life when the highs will feel the most euphoric and the lows are like dark, damp tunnels, at the end of which there is a very very faint flickering light that feels as though it’s going to take nearly a decade to reach.
A few weeks after this break up to end all break ups, I received an automated text from Vodafone. I had been removed from my now ex-boyfriend’s family group. I sobbed for hours, inconsolable. The pain of losing someone I loved was compounded by a banal series of administrative tasks, which fuelled my grief. As well as refusing to leave my student house, binge watching episodes of The West Wing from morning until morning I had to act, fast. It was important to unfriend and unfollow the ex, to return any of his possessions to him so that they could not resurface from a pile of dirt knickers at some point in the future and reopen the wound which, then, I could never imagine healing. I asked friends to unfriend him, for the very same reason. I was in agony, every part of my ached. I thought it would never end, like a comedown or hangover that you never emerge from.
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And then, one day, 7 years later I saw him. I was walking home from work, along the same route that I took every day, and there he was. It was the first time I had seen him since we broke up over the phone; he was framed perfectly by the window of the bar at the end of my road like a real life Instagram square. I stopped. I waited. I braced myself. Nothing. It never came, the wave never hit. I walked on, opened my front door, trod the stairs and sat on the sofa. Any moment now I would cry. Soon I would find myself automatically writing an inappropriate text message and clicking send before anyone could stop me. Still nothing. I felt fine.
When you are in the throes of grief as a break up unfolds, its shocks hitting you long after the initial quake has hit, you cannot imagine what life will be like when it stops. People tell you that you will ‘get over it’ and, hell, you might try to. You'll google ‘ways to get over someone’, you’ll ask every adult you find for their advice and you will ignore all of it.
And then, one day, when you haven’t even realised that you’ve stopped thinking about it, something will happen and you’ll realise that, without knowing it, you got over it. A couple of weeks ago I was numbing my brain by scrolling through Instagram when I should have been doing a million and one other things and it happened again. Another ex, whom I had an overall less important but undeniably no less intense relationship with, appeared in my suggested accounts feed. There he was, iridescent in a brightly coloured outfit, standing next to the girl he Venn diagrammed me with, at their engagement party. My friends of friends were there, it was a huge celebration that once would have driven me to distraction, caused my heart to pound and my fists to clench. Again, I waited. I paused, my thumb hovering and ready to retreat from danger, but I felt nothing. Mildly intrigued, I delved into their engagement hashtag, aware that this social media masochism could cause me pain but, again, it never came.
No tingles, no stomach lurching like an elevator in free fall down its shaft, no tight chest, no hot head, no welling up and no desire to phone a friend. I was fine. It was almost exactly 5 years to the day since I’d last spoken to him in person.
In the aftermath of each breakup, as I’d scrambled around trying desperately to collect the emotions which had been strewn around me, I had longed for fine. I had willed and wished for it. How could it be so difficult to find and then, when I was busy or looking the other way, creep in so quietly?
I ask Mark Hekster, a clinical psychologist and head psychologist at The SummitClinic if this might just possibly be that elusive concept the Americans call closure? He’s sceptical. ‘Closure is too defined a concept’ he tells me, ‘endings of relationships are not just about the end point in itself, it’s about what happens to get you there, it’s a process.’He adds, ‘the end of a relationship can be as intense as the start, as the love, the infatuation and all the stuff that goes with the beginning of a relationship. If not more’ and when you’re faced with a breakup, he says, ‘you’re exposed. These days, social media compounds the associations of loss and status that come with a relationship ending, and that can make it very hard to deal with.’
And what of the desire for an instant fix, for closure and to not hurt so much for so long? ‘We’re all human, we feel things and when a relationship comes to an end it hurts. Of course, it hurts. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s a completely natural thing to have feelings of loss. It can be very dramatic depending on the type of relationship that it is’ Mark tells me. He’s concerned that closure is, ultimately, unhelpful, ‘there shouldn’t be a requirement for there to be no pain at the end of a relationship’ he says ‘I think that’s what people want, they don’t want it to hurt so much. But if you are deeply affected by someone, especially if you are in contact or connected via social media that makes it so much harder.’
‘I’m not sure that closure is ‘a thing’. I don’t even think I fully understand what it means, it’s like a fantasy. It’s a great wish – everything’s come to an end, it’s closed now, it’s been squashed.’
Can he shed any light on how and when I got over my exes? ‘Relationships at that age aren’t necessarily about settling down. They’re about discovering what you need from other people, learning about yourself and they’re about evolving. And so, the end of a relationship will feel like mourning or grief because you’re discovering how you process loss.’
‘You’re asking how could it be so intense then and now not be like that at all. If you think of it as a process, you’ve obviously fulfilled certain tasks in your life which means you now have a certain level of independence. You’re not reliant on other people for the things you once relied on them for. You have let go because you can let go.’
So, there you have it. It turns out that the American sitcom buzzword concept of ‘closure’ is probably a dud and that there is no sure fire way to get over someone you’ve shared experiences, dark thoughts, bodily fluids, hopes and dreams with. There is no magic break up recipe and if there was, after all this time, it turns out that the ingredients are not black coffee, bananas, white wine, gym sessions and one night stands. There is only one thing that will ever get you to the top of the hill so that you can look back down on your past whilst getting ready to propel yourself down, at high speed, towards the next bit of your future and that is, quite simply, time.
Teachers, friends, parents and bosses will tell you that your intense feelings will pass and it’s true, they will. They’ll tell you to buck up and say ‘it’s not the end of the world’ and it’s true, it’s not. But, for a while, it might feel like it is. It’s only through knowing loss that you can appreciate what you have. It’s only through feeling pain that you can truly embrace joy. It’s only through feeling lonely that you can ever really understand the importance of being loved. The wounds of the first few big break ups you experience; they will leave scars which will gradually fade but they will always be part of who you are. You will know more about love because of them, more about yourself and more about your friends. Only someone who has had their heart properly broken will know how to comfort and console a friend when it happens to them.
Know that you will get through it and, one day, feel just fine about it. No more, no less. But also know that these are the things that will make you the person that you’re going to be. The feelings that lead you to leave the club and queue up in Perfect Fried Chicken on your own at 3 am might not ever be so intense again, or you might be too busy to take the time to indulge them. Know that if you can deal with the break up of your first or second proper relationship, you’re going to be fine. Redundancy, friend fall outs, money worries, shitty landlords; it’s all going to be fine. Nothing will compare to the pain of seeing the first person you loved on Instagram with someone else and you’re stronger for it. There’s more to come and the next time it does, embrace the pain safe in the knowledge that, one day, when you’re least expecting it you’ll realise that the plaster fell off a long time ago, you didn’t even notice because you were busy living and, now, you see that the skin underneath is no longer raw. Grieving might be hard, messy and painful, quick fixes will appeal but, in the end, it’s the only way to heal. And there’s no convenient, neat cure all term for that.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.