The Pain of Breaking Up

Published October 9, 1981. I had to take a few weeks off from writing this column to get the semester under way at the university. Now that things have settled down (do they ever?) it is time to start writing again, something that I have enjoyed during the past two years. Of particular interest have been the many insightful letters received from numerous readers relating some of their comments about marital relationships.

During the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to talk to many students about the summer and what happened, or did not happen. Numerous students have shared with me their summer romances, and in some instances the break-ups that followed.

While most of us are aware of the sorrow and emotional pain that often arise because of divorce, many of us are not as sensitive as we should be to people, young and old, who anticipate marriage with someone and then for one reason or another, the marriage does not occur. For many, the emotional disruption is just as intense as in divorce. For others it is greater.

When a married couple divorce, there is some finality to the termination measured by a legal decree. If the marriage terminates with the death of one or the other, there is a social event, a funeral, that marks the transition of the relationship. But when a couple breaks up a relationship before marriage, there is a tentativeness, an on-again off-again process where one or both are uncertain of the status of the relationship for an extended period of time.

In breaking up a relationship before marriage, it is difficult to realize that it is, indeed, over. And in most cases, one would like to know when the other has decided that the relationship, and ultimately the marriage, is off. One of my students, Elizabeth Sainsbury, once wrote a few lines titled “Breakup.” She wrote:

A few words

Truthfully told

Would have hurt but would have

Sooner healed

Than a few actions

That told me

Good-bye.

And many of the young people I talk to feel after a relationship or engagement has been terminated that all the time and effort was wasted. Just because two people fall in love, contemplate marriage, but then decide not to marry, does not invalidate the relationship. In such relationships we help each other grow up, mature, and learn about love. We also learn about ourselves, how we relate to others, and what it is like to be in love. Because we do not marry does not mean the love was any less genuine. Love and marital compatibility are mutually exclusive. That is, they can exist separate and apart from each other.

My experience in teaching and counseling about marriage is that most people, about 75-80 percent, have at least one love relationship where marriage is discussed or contemplated but does not ensue. But from these encounters we learn about life, love, and marriage and are better prepared when we decide to take the step later in life.

And some who break-up are discouraged to the point that they seriously question whether or not they will meet or marry anyone else. After breaking up a long, intense engagement, one young woman wrote in her journal, “The sorrow of our break-up is more than I can bear.” After three weeks, she went back and added the word “alone.” Several months later she was happily married to another person as will be most people who break off an engagement or terminate a serious relationship.