When it comes to breaking up with someone, isn’t it really just one reason why to do it? Love no longer sustains you. Do you remember the first few weeks of a budding relationship? You could live on what the feeling of love afforded you, alone. Eating and sleeping paled in comparison to the quench of what ol’Cupid shot you in the butt with. The late night phone calls that last for hours, the flowers, text messages the moment you woke up, wishing you a good day? Flutters in your stomach when they came into the room. Why there was so much romanticism about love in your head, you could almost see tiny pink hearts circle around you like a cartoon image.
Then it either continues coming stronger, with speeds of a runaway train; or it starts to slip away, like a thief in the night. Relationships can be pushed off the cliff for many reasons, but the simple fact is that the love is not enough. For one person or both. Sure, we can disguise it in the details of moving away, going in different directions, not compatible, but really? You just don’t love the person enough anymore to keep it going.
I am working on revisions for my new book, THE TRUTH ABOUT ELISE. It’s about a girl with commitment issues. The first part of the book Elise is trying to break up with her perfect boyfriend, Darren. For whatever reason, she does not feel like love outweighs the risk involved with staying with him. She fears one day he’ll leave her. Elise loves him, but it’s not enough to kill the fear.
Someone in my family is going through a breakup now. The couple has been together for two years. The guy is the initiator; the killer of all love and hope. The girl is dumbfounded over the breakup. What happened? Well, yes, the guy temporarily is living somewhere else for the summer, but if he loved her….I mean reallyyyy loved her, wouldn’t he move mountains to stay together? The ugly truth of the matter is, he’s putting himself and his needs before her. He doesn’t love her more than his dreams of moving on. She doesn’t know this now, of course, but she’s being spared worse hurt if they stayed together longer. The breakup eventually would come. Poor girl.
My debut book, WAKING AMY, discusses divorce. Anyone walk down the aisle at their wedding thinking to themselves that one day they’ll be looking across a table with the guy standing in the tux, figuring out who gets the sofa and who gets the poodle? But, it’s so easy to now just call your attorney and get the papers drawn up. If it’s so easy to do that, were you ever really that invested? Investment, to me, means giving a lot of yourself. Giving unconditionally. Giving things that sometimes hurts to give; sacrificing to make the other person happy. Does anyone fight to stay together anymore? Was is ever really love in the first place? Or maybe just a figment.
