The fourth component of Heartache

The fourth component of Heartache is loss of self-esteem. The departure of of the loved one is a huge blow to your self-esteem, because does it not show that once people get to know you, you lose your attractiveness? After a few weeks or months or years with you it is inevitable that the loved one, an exceptional being, would end up discovering and being revolted by your mediocrity, which you only managed to disguise long enough to seduce them, and which only their inexperience prevented them from detecting. Now that you find yourself without them, all your old inadequacies – physical, moral, intellectual and social – which you were able o forget or to put into perspective, now seem like insurmountable weaknesses.

Evidently, such shortcomings condemn you to a life of perpetual solitude, or to accepting second best and mourning the loved one forever (At this point in yur reflections, beware of being assailed by the first and second components). The love you experienced with the love one was a stroke of luck that you didn’t deserve and that you were unable to make last anyway, a paradise you were only granted access to because the loved one was overly generous towards you. You enjoyed a smug sense of superiority so long you didn’t leave your mediocre world, like a big fish in a small pond, but your pursuit of the loved one led you out into the open sea of sentiment, where only the very best can hope to survive. The unbearable pain you feel now is only just atonement for you inadequacy combined with you vanity.

Hector and the secrets of love – Francois Lelord

The third component of Heartache

The third component of heartache is anger. Unlike the second component, where we blame ourselves and all our faults for driven the loved one away, this time it is the object of our love whom we blame for having behaved shamefully towards us. The person who has jilted us no longer seems to glow with boundless beauty of goodness, but appears on the contrary as a cruel, shallow, ungrateful being, in a word, a bitch, or a complete bastard, whom we like to see, not as before in order to declare our undying love and true remorse, but in order to unleash the full force of our wrath.

The third component manifests itself, then, in the form of painful fits of suppressed rage stirred by memories of all the loved one’s failings, which take place most often in the final weeks before they leave. They break off contact for several days despite promising to stay in touch. With hindsight, there have been several indication that, before leaving us for good, they have been seeing someone else for an unknown period of time, the duration of which we will seek to discover with the doggedness of a paleontologist attempting to date a dinosaur’s jawbone. Shortly before withdrawing from us, they assure us tenderly that they love us. If they’ve lied to us, it shows how shamefully deceitful they are; if they meant what they had said, then they’re shallow, fickle and irresponsible.

This resentment can became so intense it burst out: we begin talking to ourselves, reproaching the loved one as though they were present, imagining them trembling, crying or begging for forgiveness when confronted with our righteous anger. One step further and we start leaving accusatory messages on the loved one’s answering machine and voicemail, or writing them letters venting our anger in words aimed at hurting them in the same way as we have been hurt.

These attempts at revenge are ill advised because after the email has been sent or letter posted, we might suffer another unexpected attack of the second component (guilty brooding over our own past failings), which will be made all the more powerful by the sudden realization that what we have just done is irreversible and renders impossible the return of the loved one, which, despite all signs to the contrary, is what we are still hoping for.

Hector and the secrets of love – Francois Lelord

The second component of Heartache

The second component of what is commonly referred to as heartache is guilt. We blame ourselves for the loss of the loved one, and regret everything we did and said that might have contributed to the waning of love. Especially painful are memories of our insensitivity, neglect or even unkindness towards the loved one, who seems to us with hindsight to have been remarkably generous in loving us despite our shortcomings. This self-criticism invariably takes the form of questions we put to ourselves: ‘How could I have been so neglectful when he (or she) needed my help? How could I have been irritable with him (or her) when all they are doing was trying to put me in a good mood? Why I stupidly flirt with someone else when I knew it would make them suffer? Why did I let that idiot chase them without doing anything, as though I were so sure of myself or, on the contrary, so unsure? How could I have refused to respond to their references to our future together when at the time that was what they were dreaming of and all they wanted was to love me?’

During this reminiscences, the loved one appears as a shining example of tenderness, honesty and generosity towards us, while we reveal ourselves to be neglectful, selfish and indifferent to our lover’s happiness. These guilt-ridden thoughts can prompt us to write long letters full of remorse and promises of our undying love to the loved one. Writing these letters brings us great comfort, but it is brief, all the more so because the loved one doesn’t usually reply.

Hector and the secrets of love – Francois Lelord

The components of Heartache

The first component of heartache: neediness. ‘ I need to see him (or her), to talk to him (or her), right now.’ The drug addict in need of a fix. The child separated from its mother.

Off all components, neediness is the one we experience most acutely on a physical level, not dissimilar to the withdrawal symptoms described by drug addicts deprived of their addictive substance. The area of neediness that concerns us refers to the temporary or permanent absence of the loved one whether physically or emotionally. This absence can lead to insomnia, anguish, changes in eating habits, loss of concentration – even in situations where full attention is essential – and on a more general level it prevents us from experience ant pleasure, even from activities we previously considered enjoyable. These dreadful effects of neediness can be momentarily alleviated by taking a range of substances (distilled or fermented alcohols, nicotine, tranquillisers, narcotics) or even by engaging in absorbing activities (prolonged hard work, television, physical exercise, sexual; relations with a new partner or with an ex-partner), but the more we push neediness away, the more violently comes back, like a wild animal retreating only to charge with greater force.

Conversely, particular places, people and encounters that evoke memories of the loved one can intensify these attacks of neediness: the park where we walked together, the restaurant we used to meet at, the friend who witnesses our love for one another, the sweet melody the loved one enjoyed humming when he or she was feeling happy. We can experience ever stronger emotions when we come across an object that the loved one has left behind. A bottle of make-up remover in the bathroom or a pair of old slippers at the back of a cupboard can move us greater heights of suffering and emotion that any great symphony, work of art or poem.

Neediness sometimes reaches peaks of suffering the intensity of which makes us fearful of the hours to come (‘How will I survive today? Tomorrow? The rest of my life?’). it also causes moments if abstraction when we are with other people, even people we like. It is generally accepted that confiding our feelings to a close friend or professional can bring real relief, although this is a generally short-lived.

Hector and the secrets of love - Francois Lelord