46. On Love's Erosion.

It’s strange (and worrying) how far one can travel emotionally in a relatively short period of time. This reflection (written in the 1980s) is on the steps through which love can turn to ashes.

"The first thing to go was the sense that time spent together was special, the best quality time that everything else should give way for. There crept in a desire, on both our parts, to do other things in preference to spending time together, to the point where we allowed those other things to crowd out the time we needed to spend in maintaining, sustaining, nourishing our relationship. Eventually it came to seem that we were most ‘alive’ when we were with other people, either together or independently. Sharing those times, discussing those times, came to be the main focus of communication between us, and took precedence over simply feeling alive alone together – when nothing may need to be said. Times alone began to deaden. We increasingly kept our tired behaviour for each other, our energised behaviour for others, and a sense developed that we were each holding the other back from the expression of ourselves. This generated and justified irritability and an off-hand uncaring attitude, so that eventually there seemed little to share other than the routines of daily life, little left to talk about. Our central concerns, the talking in our heads, was focused elsewhere, with real and imaginary others. Finally the relationship deteriorated to the point where we were totally and destructively honest with each other and let loose those wicked goblins that had been crouching on our tongues. We no longer gave a damn for preserving the lies and facades and vented our bottled up resentment, anger and antagonism. I suppose it could only end in carnage, bloodshed, guts on the floor, and all the pretences of continuing as good friends would be shown up for the sham they were. If there has ever been any real bond of love – as there was – then the breaking of that bond can only come with bitterness, as though the degree of pain in the ending is the measure of the joy that was once there. Surely only the indifferent can walk straight into some new arrangement without a backward look? Or the emotionally insensitive and morally stupid.

I feel healed from the trauma of that break-up now, and have pretty well put aside the ill feelings surrounding the end of the relationship. To be hostile to someone you once loved is to be hostile to yourself or a part of yourself, for if your lover really was such an arsehole what does that make you to have loved them so? But it’s sad that so much that was good should disintegrate to almost nothing."