All My Children

The burning out of an infatuation can be a painful matter at any age for the person who is still in love, but it is particularly so for the young teenager who has not yet developed any protection against such hurts. There is an aching, stinging emptiness. There is a loss of face, a loss of a sense of dignity, with friends and family There may be a scalding jealousy if the romance has been ended by the beloved’s turning his affection to someone else. There may be a sense of disappointment or indignation or outrage against the erstwhile beloved who now seems a fraud. However, it isn’t strictly fair to blame a person for not being able to be what you had imagined him to be.

The pain in the two individuals is usually quite unequal in the break-up, partly because the infatuation was so often unequal from the beginning. (A cynical philosopher once said that a love affair consists of one person who loves and another person who consents to be loved.) In any case, one person is likely to fall out of love long before the other.

Almost all people have gone through these despairs, most often in the early teens. As a result of them, each person becomes a bit more cautious about falling in love again. In the long run this will be helpful to him as long as he doesn’t become bitter. Each disappointment helps to educate an individual in how better to find out what other people are really like, how better to know what he himself needs in a beloved. If a person is able to be honest, he may learn what faults of his own contributed to the break-up.

It is wise for the person who has been hurt by love not to make a dramatic show of his wound nor to prolong his suffering. I mean that an individual who has been severely disappointed or angered by what seems like the faithlessness of another may, without quite realising what he is doing, keep telling his friends how badly he has been treated, hoping to be comforted by evoking their sympathy for him and their indignation against the traitor. One trouble with this way of taking it is that it keeps the disappointed lover from getting back on an even keel; he comes to enjoy self- pity. Another is that it’s apt to exhaust the patience of his friends. You have to try to act like a good sport, no matter how you feel; let bygones be bygones, chalk it all up to experience, wait for the wound to heal. But if you have deep feelings, the healing will take time.

Since young people are apt to fall in love and fall out of love with more violence and more suddenness than older people, anything that can be done to save heartaches will be valuable. The only plea I can offer is that young people try to be honest with each other if and just as soon as their feelings change. Usually one person begins to have doubts while the other is still passionately in love; the first is then reluctant to say what he feels because he shrinks from admitting that all his vows were mistaken. He hates to cause anguish to his partner and he dreads the arguments and the reproaches. But of course the longer the pretence is kept up, the more painful the relationship becomes for both. So try to be honest at an early stage. Frankness does not mean brutality, as some people think. It can be fair and gentle.

Though there are usually arguments, they solve nothing. The person who has become disenchanted can only repeat again, in some form, the message, ‘I don’t feel love for you any more.’ It is human for the partner still in love to say angry and provocative things. The unfairness of some of these tempts the other person to be cruel, but he should try to resist this.

The person who is feeling deserted will beg for continued dates in the hope that they will clear up what he presumes is a misunderstanding. The other cannot refuse to have one or two more meetings, to avoid the appearance of running away or refusing to listen. But he should refuse to let the issue be confused by turning these into petting dates. (Some females and many males have a simple faith that a little lovemaking will solve all problems.) And he should refuse to have more and more meetings, for these will only prolong the agony.

Now I must make a large exception. I was not referring to lovers‘ quarrels. They are very common. They are caused by one lover’s resentment towards the other over such everyday offences as selfishness, inconsiderateness, unfairness, ungratefulness, laziness, messiness, irritating mannerisms, flirtatiousness, or siding with a relative who criticises the beloved. The resentful one makes accusations. The other responds with counter-accusations which may or may not have anything to do with the case. Or the other simply implies that he doesn’t care what the first person dislikes in him, he has no intention of changing. This in a way is the most shocking thing he could say, since the position of both lovers from the start of the romance has been that each would do anything under the sun if it would please the other.

What happens in a lovers‘ quarrel is that all the petty irritations which have been accumulating for some time but which have been firmly suppressed come boiling to the surface at one time. The reason there are irritations—aside from the fact that everyone has irritating characteristics—is that the lovers are getting to know each other better and also that they are now being a little less careful about showing only their best features.

Far from indicating a fading love, such quarrels in most cases are actually an expression of love, in that each partner cares intensely how the other behaves towards him. Quarrels are also important steps in the adjustment of two people towards each other. Needless to say, two people cannot be a perfect match to start with. Either by quarrels—or by subtler methods of detection, for not all lovers have to quarrel—each finds out what his own irritating characteristics are and tries to modify them. Or he can’t or won’t modify them, and his beloved decides to put up with them. Or his beloved realises eventually that there are more liabilities than assets and falls out of love.

What determines in the end whether a romance will strengthen into a good marriage or peter out depends on how many good and how many unfortunate qualities there are in a person in the eyes of his beloved, on his willingness to see his own faults, on his capacity to change and grow. When I emphasise the phrase ‘in the eyes of his beloved‘ I mean it. People have tastes that are hard to explain. A girl may be impressed with the stuffy egotism of a boy which most other people consider ridiculous. And a boy, otherwise sensible, will be delighted with a baby-talk tone in his girl’s pronunciation which turns other people’s stomachs.

If your beloved has fallen out of love with you, remember that there is a very human tendency to counteract any sense of being a failure at love by quickly becoming infatuated with someone else—`on the rebound’. You can easily fool yourself and make a fool of yourself when in such a mood. In a majority of cases, however, there is a feeling of depression and of not trusting love which lasts for weeks.

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