Hear me out: this is not a piece about how breakups give you back to yourself (they do). OK, this isn’t only a piece about how they give you back yourself. It’s mostly a treatise on why breakups are the true key to long lasting love.

I’m a romantic. I dropped the “hopeless” part along the way which I take for a sign that I’m becoming slightly jaded (just a tinge of green) but I love love; I’m also a diligent student of the real, messy non-hearts and rainbows variety. I’ve found the truth to be much more surprising, meaningful and compelling. There is no fairytale but who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Besides, fairytales look exhausting and like photographed food: much better looking but not nearly as good as the real thing (not to mention the fake inedible lookalike ingredients that’ll probably kill you). That being said, I’ve come to believe that breakups (ideally as few as possible) are an essential part of any long term relationship.

Full disclosure, I have recently gone through a break up and I have no regrets. Also, it was about our 2nd (3rd?) break up so I’m basically a pro at this point. It’s easy to judge an again/off again relationships but in my personal experience, our relationship gained new depth with each break up and therein lies my case: If you’re determined/supposed to be together, breakups can be both formative and instructive.
Disclaimer: I’m not telling you to stay with your nonsense person who hurts you/treats you poorly that you keep taking back. This is not for you (side note: get out, run, save yourself! That’s for you).

HYPOTHESIS
Let’s quickly recap some chemistry. Ions are atoms/molecules with either a positive (cation) or negative (anion) net electrical charge. Both are unstable though I’m sure if you asked them, they’re both perfectly happy molecules and have no idea what they could be. The goal is an ionic bond (stable AF) with each molecule gaining stability from the others net charge thus this equation:
Relationship=cations
Breakup=anions

Every great real life relationship that I admire up close and from afar has had at least one break up. Not a “break” as people are wont to call them, retrospectively. I mean legitimate “I may not want to be with you forever”/”it’s over”/”I’m out” type break ups (broken dishes sold separately). Why I think it’s so wonderful is because of what we know about humans and love.

Love is neither exact nor science but whatever it is, it consistently motivates human behaviour. For any behavioural science enthusiasts (or those paying attention) human beings are nothing if not predictable and there is merit in examining those behaviours that repeat themselves, particularly concerning long term Relationships. Love is energy and energy has laws it must obey.

METHODOLOGY
Break ups occur when the pressure generated within the relationship exceeds the present containers predetermined constraints. The build-up may be gunk, pent up emotions, clashing same-charged ions, weak covalent bonds breaking, undiscovered elements. In short: Energy. Good or bad: energy can not be created or destroyed only transferred from one form to another.
I believe that the process of breaking-up leads to a literal gathering of oneself, a stocktaking helped by the sudden return of energy that had been, until recently, expended on someone else. Among the sharp edges of your now broken relationship, saddled with the vulnerability that accompanies heartbreak, you encounter the other consistent (and evolutionary) influence on human behaviour: pain. Pain is protective, instructive and potentially paralysing but should you allow it, it is also an exceptional teacher.

Breakups are the perfect storm, this emotional sweet spot that has you surrounded by pain on all sides, senses sharpened by newfound vulnerability (with energy to spare) in this place where love used to live. Still lives. And you get to decide what form it takes next. You can transform it into rage, longing or fear. You can look at what remains with sharp sensitive eyes and see the love for what it was, truly. You can decide you like what you see and with renewed energy (literally!) plot a new way forward. In the case of my hypothesis, should you choose to try again: you can used what you’ve learned to build a new (better) container with properties that better complement the elements at play. Or perhaps one big enough (or better insulated) to withstand the forces that defeated the old container. You can redirect the energies positively, form ionic bonds from what used to be opposing forces or tear the whole thing down and build something new for yourself. Or with someone else.

And I can imagine nothing more beautiful than that opportunity. Nor better tools.

EXPERIMENT
I’m going to stop giving one of my favourite bands (The Script**) a run for their money with this extended metaphor and dive into real life examples that will serve as case studies.

This is as good a time as any to mention that I “follow” a lot of “real” (that is to say, non-fictional) couples a) because of the whole romantic thing and b) because it’s fascinating. Starting with one of my favourite YouTube series {The And}. Not only is this is a fantastic series about different kinds of human relationships in general, its also the (internet) home of some of my favourite real life couples. They ask each other questions that they’ve never seen and its compelling stuff. Namely:

Ben & Sidra, Keyshia & Andrew, and Mishal & Elliot

These couples have taught me to stop thinking that love looks a certain way. Some of these couples don’t look like people who’d be friends let alone lovers. Until you hear them speak to (and about) each other. Energy never lies.

Freddie Harrel discusses the factors surrounding meeting her husband (they’re so adorable BTW, I started following her weeks before her wedding and I’ve been in love with her/their adorable brand of realness ever since) amongst other things.

The real life couples I speak to mention their breakups in passing. As if it shouldn’t be considered a fundamental part of their love story. I remember my friend Jess was planning her wedding in the middle of one my breakups (she was super accommodating about the ever-evolving plus one status) and casually dropped the fact that her and her then fiancée (now husband) had broken up during the course of their 7 year relationship. It would be so helpful if people were more specific, and said things like ‘our 10 year relationship includes about 2 years of break ups (of course people don’t owe us anything but it would go a long way in restoring some truth to True Love). Here, the incredibly stylish Karla Deras mentions the same about her and her husband. I follow her on Instagram and in their thousands of (adorable) posts about each other over the years, this never came up. For most of them, I think being confronted with the reality of going on without their SO was more hellish than they’d anticipated (again, I’m not talking to or about the lovely yet co-dependent humans). Something they would have taken for granted had they not actively stepped out of the relationship (with no plans to return). The breakup helped them to appreciate the significant contributions that the other person brought into their life through sharp absence.

Susan Downey (the other half of Team Downey) talks here about the moment she was quite certain that Robert was not her guy.

Jada and Will Smith: as a “power couple” in the public eye, Will’s appearance on Jada’s fabulous Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk became a talking point for days but what I found most striking was how well she articulated this very idea talking about how they had to “destroy [their] marriage” and redefine it after realising that she could no longer continue in the marriage as it stood at the time. They made a new container.

Or as Upile Chisala put it:”Maybe burn it to the ground, maybe fix it, maybe forget it entirely.”

EXTRAPOLATION AND CONCLUSION

I genuinely believe that this why there is a disproportionate amount of former The Bachelor/Bachelorette contestants that wind up engaged mere months after professing their undying love for some cutie on national television. It’s possibly the reason that some (regular) people are married within minutes of a breakup. It explains why post-breakup albums slap so hard.

It’s also why my ex and I kept remodeling our container and finding that it was better each time. It went so far as my friend suggesting we just keep breaking up until it was perfect (not a sustainable option BTW, I do not recommend that much exposure to raw energy and acute pain repeatedly). In truth, I enjoyed the grey spaces between our breakups because we’d have such beautifully meaningful, honest and helpful conversations about our relationship. We got to stand outside of thing and examine it without consequences (it already being broken and all). I fondly dubbed them our postmortems* and I value them almost as much as our relationship itself. I am grateful our energies met and I am forever changed. The energy never lies.

Editor’s note Oct Oct 2021: here’s a link to one if my favourite relationship Podcasts Dear Shandy in an episode titled Breakup bootcamp: rewiring your heart. Enjoy!

*an apt description because a similar dismembering-without-consequence event takes place in forensic pathology. They’re not always necessary and require (at least one) willing participant. I know, in part, that I’m not a surgeon because I did not enjoy literal post mortems nearly as much as my friendly lost relationship brand.

**I’ll never forget the moment I stood in the middle of the Coca-Cola dome and heard their song Science and Faith for the first time (that wasn’t on purpose). I was clearly already a fan, having gotten an entire Summer job to afford the tickets but, that day I walked away a Stan:
“You won’t find faith or hope down a telescope, you won’t find heart or soul in the stars. You can break everything down to chemicals but you can’t explain a love like ours” goosebumps