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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Spring always reminds me how glorious blue skies and green leaves can be. When I was in the second grade, Mrs. Arnold chastised me for using those colors together. She said they didn’t match. Mrs. Arnold had very specific rules about which colors could be used together. We couldn’t deviate from her rules. When I used green and blue together in one of my class drawings, she forced me to do it over, since she said those colors shouldn’t be used together. I was a polite and obedient child, but I asked her why they didn’t match — since God used them together in nature. She was exasperated and told me to follow her rules. So when I see glorious beauty which mixes green and blue — such as this photo I took just outside my office Friday afternoon — it always reminds me of Mrs. Arnold. It reminds me that she was wrong. And it’s a good reminder for us all. There are established rules about a lot of things. Many of those are good rules. But if an expert tells you something and you know he’s wrong, you might need to take a chance. He might be just as mistaken as Mrs. Arnold was.

In the coming months and years, we’re going to need inventive and productive people pursuing things that matter. We’re going to need smart and self-directed men and women who will find ideas and create enterprises that will help bypass the political class and build a new and better society. But everything I see in media right now seems geared toward telling people how to entertain and amuse themselves. The stories are full of advice about what to binge on Netflix and what games you should be playing while you’re stuck at home. We desperately need to ignore this advice and be looking toward building new futures instead. Being passive consumers got us where we are today. It’s time that we reclaim our former role — the one that made this country wealthy — as productive and free people who build far more than we consume. This could be a great opportunity for those who will take it. Turn off Netflix. Put down the video game controller. We need new ideas, new achievements, new goals — not more coach potatoes. This is the time to be thinking and creating and planning for the future that you and I both want.

The better I know myself, the more I realize that my core fault — and the source of many other failings in me — is that of believing on a deep level that everyone and everything in my world must be perfect, especially me. If I had seen any of this in myself as recently as 10 years ago, I would have dismissed it as a small failing that showed up only every now and then, but I now see it as the wellspring from which my other sins are born. It’s such an insidious belief — and one that can look on the surface like a reasonable desire to be good and right — that it’s hard to acknowledge it as the inner cancer it is. But until I understood this, it was always going to be impossible for me to get over my deep shame about my imperfection or to accept the love of another person, because she is bound to be flawed, too.

If it’s not yet spring where you are, you can at least enjoy 60 seconds of spring in the South with me. This was just outside my office late Thursday afternoon. Don’t you need a relaxing break today? See it on YouTube by clicking here.

It pays to be nice to the employees at Walmart — and everywhere else, for that matter. I was just in Walmart to buy some kitty litter when one of the employees called me over with a conspiratorial tone: “Hey, David, do you need some toilet paper?” she almost whispered. She had found a giant package hidden somewhere and she said she had been saving it for someone she really liked. So I’m the proud new owner of 24 additional mega rolls of toilet paper, which are worth something like $748 on the black market. On a more serious note, be good to people when you have a chance, as this employee was for me. And remember that people remember the way you treat them. I wouldn’t have treated this woman and her co-workers a bit differently in the past if I’d known she would someday do me this small favor, but there are benefits to treating people well, even if that’s not your purpose. Be good to each other.

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