"But I heard he makes you happy, so that's fine by me"

The 2017 Ed Sheeran track New Man showed up on my playlist this morning. It’s sung from the perspective of the old boyfriend, ruminating on the new boyfriend:

I heard he spent five hundred pounds on jeans
Goes to the gym at least six times a week
Wears boat shoes with no socks on his feet
And I hear he’s on a new diet and watches what he eats
He’s got his eyebrows plucked and his arsehole bleached
Owns every single Ministry CD
Tribal tattoos and he don’t know what it means
But I heard he makes you happy, so that’s fine by me

In a 2019 interview with Esther Perel on The Knowledge Project, Perel touched on the big relationships of our life, and how breakups — and the quality of the breakups — inform the quality of what comes next:

And not all of us will necessarily only have one relationship, an adult relationship. We will have two or three, many of us, and some of us will do it with the same person, but others will sometimes change. And if you can live and to the best of your ability, wish good to the other person, wish them well and wish you well, then you actually are more prepared for the next relationship.

The more you remain tied in your bitterness, the more you bring that with you. The way people live the previous relationships, the quality of the breakups, is really at the heart of how people start the next relationships. How much they will trust, how they trust, how they collaborate, how they protect themselves, how they anticipate what had happened, how much they bring these invisible others, exes with them, be they ex-partners, husbands, wives or boyfriends or founders.

It’s really very interesting to see the parallel of those things.

In a Facebook support group for widows and widowers I read this morning a post from a woman who’d just received her late husband’s phone from the police. Among the things she found there was his FitBit app, and in that FitBit app she found the recording of his heartbeat in the minutes up to and at the point where he took his own life.

The afterimage of reading that has been careening around my head all day. I can’t shake it. 

I have little in my own grief to relate to the enormity of that, and yet the pain behind her words, the rumination, the wonder, the angst, the dreadfulness of her discovery, the questions, it all resonated with me on some level.

And thinking of Sheeran’s lyrics and Perel’s words, I can’t help but thinking that while we are steeped in the all manner of songs, movies, and advice columns about romantic-life-after-breakup, finding your way through death and grief and everything that means—and it often means hard as nails turmoil—and finding your way to your next adult relationship is something we in the Kingdom of the Grievers are left with Sleepless in Seattle as a model for, shrouded with an extra coating of guilt, shame, and confusion about whether it’s even a right and proper thing to consider.

Perel is an advocate for “conscious uncoupling” as a way of ending a relationship, an opportunity for a deliberate mutual accounting and recasting, and is in that context that she was speaking about the utility of a good breakup. For the bereaved, there is often no such opportunity.

Things.

End.

Whether it’s suddenly and unexpected, or incurable and drawn out, the opportunity for a conscious uncoupling is rare  

No matter how much I wish to think of myself as a clean room project, “the way I live the previous relationship, how much I will trust, how I trust, how I collaborate, how I protect myself, how I anticipate what had happened,” to paraphrase Perel, is woven into me.

In the most positive light, I have come to know myself in a much clearer way, and have been granted the opportunity to actively think about the answers to all of those Perel questions, and more.

At my worst, I am shadow boxing with past versions of myself, reacting to unhealed hurts and phantom pains.

It’s a harsh notion to think of “building back better” when someone has died. But nonetheless that’s what all of us, seeking connection again, after death or circumstance, seek.

I didn’t have an opportunity to consciously uncouple.

But I have been granted one to consciously couple, bringing all that I’ve learned, about myself, about trust, about collaboration, about protection, to my life with Lisa.

There are struggles.

Many.

The “invisible others”—both sets—are always there.

But there is joy in the discovery, the uncovering, the adventure.

It feels good to be alive.