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When Love is Gone

“My love is like a red, red rose, that’s newly sprung in June,” cooed famous Scot Robert Burns. And while Burns’ rose may show no signs of fading, others less lucky in love may see little but the thorns.
For centuries we have turned to the poets and songwriters to help us celebrate new love or lament love’s loss. When our love is gone and our lives are shattered, the poets may help us mourn, but they can’t tell us why it hurts so much.
With over half of Canadian marriages heading for divorce, Dr. Scott Stewart, professor of philosophy at Cape Breton University felt that while sympathy is fine, it is time for some answers. Why does it hurt so much when our love dies?
The result of his work, a journal article titled “Breaking up is hard to do: a philosophical discussion of the end of love” published in Philosophy and the Contemporary World has been greeted enthusiastically both here in Canada and in England where he was recently invited to present his work at Oxford University.
“I think that most people, whether they’ve instigated the break-up or not, tend to experience feelings of worthlessness when a relationship like a marriage ends,” explained Stewart. Quickly jumping into a new relationship on the rebound may postpone these feelings but not forever, he said. “The statistics show that this type of relationship doesn’t last long.”  So, why do vast numbers of people have to endure feelings of pain and loss? Stewart says it’s in the way we love and how our love changes us.
But first, what is love? Ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that we love someone or something for its set of properties. This kind of love applies to people, as well as cars, houses or other goods. The strength of our love, Plato said, is based on our appraisal of its qualities, and it would be foolish not to trade up when we’re presented with another object – or person – with more to offer.
The other model of love is the Christian one, based on our conception of God’s love for us. This is a love we feel not because of our qualities, but in spite of them. This is the love that parents feel for their children. Romantic love, Stewart said, is a combination of the two models; it begins with the first and develops into the second. The change in the style of loving means we evolve from, say, loving our partner’s taste in music to loving our partner’s music because it’s his or her taste. “You come to enjoy doing things with your wife that you didn’t enjoy doing before,” Stewart explained, “and over time, the value of an awful lot of things you do in your life is wrapped up in the value of your partner. In fact, where you find your pleasure gets radically changed when you’re in a loving relationship – what’s pleasurable is what’s jointly defined.”
That becomes a problem when you come home to an empty house and a note on the counter. When a loving relationship breaks up, all the things that were jointly defined are gone – and it may be very difficult to return to what you found enjoyable 15 or 20 years ago.  Some philosophers call it the creation of the “we”, Stewart said. “When you’re in a loving relationship your autonomy gets altered, and some people struggle an awful lot with going back.”
Falling in love is a dangerous activity, said Plato. At best bittersweet, it can drive us insane. His advice: love something pure that never changes, like philosophy. Priests and nuns do this too, turning away from the individual messiness of falling in love with people to falling in love with God and marrying the church.
“Most of us would say that that’s not really for us, that we’d rather go with the risk in love,” Stewart said.  “Love is one of those processes that can bring us out of our selves.  Living a full, complete life involves being in a loving relationship. For most of us, there is a risk in falling in love, but it’s one we generally take.”
The issue of divorce has long been handed over to lawyers and therapists, but there is a role for philosophers. Understanding why we feel pain can often be very helpful in dealing with a situation. “Understanding anything is a good thing.”
Stewart’s work is being hailed internationally not just because it sheds new light on a near-universal condition, but because he has reintroduced philosophy into the bedrooms and personal lives of the people.
“Contemporary philosophers in general don’t discuss personal issues. A personal relationship under liberal ideology is a person’s own business. But there are still things we can say to bring meaning. There are people out there who are trying to make philosophy more personal, like it was in the ancient world,” he said.