Don't take your love away from me
Don't you leave my heart in misery
If you go then I'll be blue
'Cause breaking up is hard to do

Remember when you held me tight
And you kissed me all through the night
Think of all that we've been through
Breaking up is hard to do

They say that breaking up is hard to do
Now I know, I know that it's true
Don't say that this is the end
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again

I beg of you don't say goodbye
Can't we give our love another try?
Come on, baby, let's start anew
'Cause breaking up is hard to do

Down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
Comma, comma, down dooby doo down

Neil Sedaka (1962)

Falling in love, breakup up, getting back together, and saying goodbye forever are probably the top four memes in American popular music — and many other cultures and historical periods as well. Music doesn't actually engage us intellectually, but it does convey feeling more directly than writing. No essay can make you feel the triumph of a Sousa march, no essay can make you weep like a Schubert song. When people have the intellectual resources to parse their experiences in words, they write essays. When they don't, they sing songs.

We sing about these four basic memes because we don't have the intelligence to say much about them — especially when we're young, have nobody to turn to except schoolteachers and parents who haven't kept up, and confusing experiences are hitting us in the face every day triggering hormones we wished we didn't have. But, over a lifetime of devotion to the "love of wisdom", some of us develop insights into how to navigate such territory. I have had three of four major mated relationships in my life and here's what I've learned.

It would be nice to believe that "somewhere out there" is the one person who is "Mr. Right", and that once we see them we'll know with whom we should spend the rest of our life. It would be nice to believe that there is a superior being "somewhere out there" who will protect us from the really bad stuff. These beliefs may comfort you and help you to get to sleep at night, but they are not true. We are not penguins, who mate for life, as idyllic as that might seem.

But fortunately we are not bonobos either, who are promiscuous and incapable of romantic bonding. As a species, homo sapiens is "serially monogamous". We want monogamy but, as Neil reminds us, we seem to always break up. The good news is that, as we grow wiser and stronger, we tend to become more adept in our courtship patterns. The next relationship is almost always better than the last.

The reason falling in love, breaking up, getting back together, and saying goodbye forever are hard to do is because we are not in the habit of thinking about how personalities develop. Remember the time you went to a school reunion and met someone who seemed to be so different? Remember the ones who hadn't changed a bit? That's because people with higher needs grow and change over a lifetime. Those who lack ambition tend to stick to the same old values and meanings, and accomplish little else than to breed. But this growth is very slow. It can't be sensed by going out an a date or even sleeping with someone. Human beings most often break up because one of them grows faster than the other. If the growth differential is significant, they may find it impossible to talk to one another after a few years. Reluctantly they may realize they they are no longer good for one another and, if they are not staying together "for the sake of the children", drift apart.

Most adolescent romances tend to be like this. That doesn't mean they're bad or wrong. On the contrary, they encourage growth in uncompromising terms. If you are lucky, over the years you will find yourselves growing at comparable rates and continue to find one another interesting and essential. But if this doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world — even if it will feel that way for awhile.

(People seem to differ widely about what to feel about "failed" relationships. I don't see them as failures, but as attempts which were not successful but from which I learned a lot. So I always try to remain friends with former lovers and to think of them as family. Some of them welcome this. Some don't.)

Why don't we recognize that some people are more ambitious in their relationships than others? For at least a century, social scientists have discouraged our talking about superiority and inferiority — as if our acknowledging an obvious fact would encourage racial bigotry, gender bias, and a bunch of other nightmares that occur only to folks whose noses are burried in books and don't get out much. The fact is that all human groups are stratified by genetic factors like I.Q. and a host of other "gifts" that can neither be denied nor claimed as achievements. Einstein wasn't responsible for his genius, but it would have been a crime against humanity if he had just hidden it and pretended to be just like everybody else. I am not just like everybody else, and neither are the people I'm writing this essay for. If you feel this is an "elitist" position to take and quite counter to the currently political correct models of "social justice", then please stop reading this now and go back to letting dead white men do your thinking for you.

The most advanced humans, in fact, look for relationships that nurture and protect their growing identities. Less ambitious souls settle for whatever pleasures and enjoyments lie at hand, regardless of their longtime effects. For them, "having a good time" is about all they'll ever have.

Creative people need the psychological polarity between love and power to forge essential interpersonal bonds. People who have no such needs will tell you that sex and drugs are "recreational" and that you should have indulge in them as often as possible because, after all, it's "healthy". The most corrupt factions in the gay movement in particular have actually encouraged promiscuity.

Ambitious people with real romantic needs can never be satisfied by brief meaningless one-night stands, no more than a balanced diet can be forged from candy and donuts. In my experience, and that of the creative people I've known personally, the best policy is to be sexual with only one person at a time, but to have all the close friends you want and need, with whom you are therefor free to be affectionate and intimate in all other ways. But these realms have to be segregated in a disciplined way, and your lover must accept these terms. Any lover, for example, who doesn't want you to have friends may be more interested in his own vanity and reputation than your welfare. Do you want to carry that burden forever?

I put into practice these discoveries by making it clear to my current lover that I encourage, and even insist, that they enjoy a wide variety of friendships. Since I trust them more than anybody else, I won't even ask what happens when they are alone together.

But I will have made it clear to them that I only have one sexual relationship at a time. So If I learn that they are having sex or in some other way violating our monogamy, I will not get angry. I will simply deduce that my lover is unwilling or incapable of communicating to me in words that he is breaking up with me. At that point I may remain friends with them but will probably not trust them very much again.

So if a young person says "I'm in love with a boy who lives on another continent, but a nice boy I go to school with asked me to go a movie. What should I do?" I answer, "Going to a movie will not harm in any way the boy you are in love with, nor will being in love with someone spoil a nice movie. There's no reason you should deny yourself either experience."

And to that I would add, "And if either boy becomes jealous and tells you to drop the other one, you will know that his love is not pure, and that he wants to 'own' you. Tell him we are not cavemen anymore. Civilized people don't capture and enslave those they want in their lives. We nurture and protect everyone we can. Especially those we love the most."