When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone

By David McElroy · October 10, 2019

I woke up one morning and the fever was gone. Suddenly, unexpectedly, with no explanation. I didn’t love her anymore.

She was gone. I accepted that, but this was more. I didn’t want her anymore. It wasn’t sour grapes. I had moped and pursued her for a couple of years. She practically begged me to. But I had given all I could give to her. I had given her every chance. Finally, the love was dead. I was drained.

It was like the breaking of a fever. One day, my heart was sick that I couldn’t have her, that she wouldn’t choose me, that she wouldn’t reverse the mistake she admitted that she had made.

And then the next day, I simply didn’t care. I don’t know how it changed. I just woke up knowing that I didn’t care anymore. The painful longing was gone. I got out of bed and casually blocked her on Facebook. It was time to cut the last remaining ties.

She never heard a word from me again, not even an explanation or a goodbye. It felt liberating.

Love never dies a natural death. It’s killed by pride and ego and arrogance. It’s murdered by bad choices and fear and selfishness. In the end, though, the cause of death for love is always indifference.

Love can survive for a long time under difficult circumstances, but it can’t survive indifference. Not forever. When I reached indifference on that day nearly six years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered what she had done. It was too late. I was ready to move on.

That wasn’t just a temporary reprieve. I never felt a stab of regret in the coming days or weeks. As the weeks passed, I didn’t second-guess myself. My love for her was gone and buried.

For me, love is an all-or-nothing affair. If I love you, I crave you and need you. I crave all of you. Your voice, your touch, your smell, your presence, everything. Half a love is worse than none at all. I want all of you — or nothing at all.

For the previous couple of years, my love had lived on promises and hopes and hints and loving words. When I became indifferent, the words and promises which I had relied on suddenly meant nothing. It was as though I had been under a spell — and the spell had been broken when I woke up that morning.

This indifference continued. The weeks stretched into months and the fever didn’t return. It was then that I realized the fever was completely gone. I was free to live again. I was free to love again.

And then — months later — something completely unexpected happened.

For the first time in a long, long time, I fell in love with someone else. I had known her — not nearly well enough — years before. I had wanted to know her better, but circumstances had prevented that. I had put my feelings about her into a box and closed the lid tightly. I thought about her sometimes, but more in the way I might think of some fantasy woman who I’d never have.

And then, here she was again.

The feelings came exploding out of the box where I’d hidden them. They consumed me like a fierce fire blazing through a dry forest. Every part of me wanted every part of her. I would have done anything for her love and presence.

I had not thought I could love more powerfully than what I had loved before. I didn’t think I could want anyone as much as I had wanted her. I didn’t believe I could need life with a woman as much as I suddenly needed to live with this new woman.

What I experienced was the most powerful and most devastating love of my life. The previous love was just an ancient memory.

I got a letter this week from a woman who is still in love with a man who no longer wants her. She doesn’t hold out realistic hope that things will change. She just wants to stop loving him. She wants to stop hurting.

She asked me if she would ever get over her love — or if she would feel this way the rest of her life.

And I told her this story. I can’t predict what will happen for her. All I can say is that when I was under the spell of my love for someone six or eight years ago, I feared that nothing could ever change. I thought I was doomed to forever love someone who I couldn’t have — and that nobody could take her place.

I was wrong.

Someone not only took her place, but someone surpassed her in every possible way.

For me — and I suspect for most people — love will survive fierce blows and hurts and betrayals for a long time. But then, without warning, it will die.

When we love, we want nothing more than to be loved in return. We will make any sacrifice for that person. We believe this fierce love can never die. But if we’re pushed to indifference for long enough, the fever will finally break. We will rethink everything. The hurts and betrayals which we have willingly suffered will finally be too much.

We feel hurt. We feel used. We feel betrayed.

Then we become indifferent. Love has died. We have been set free from a love for someone who isn’t willing to choose to give us love in return.

And then, at some point — without warning — we will love again. That hope is the only thing that keeps me alive.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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