Q&A: Books for a Break Up
Books can help you get through hard things
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Q: I was curious if you had any suggestions for a book while going through a break up. This is my first adult big love break up. I am a reader and I always turn to books in my seasons of life.
A: I chose this question for the newsletter closest to Valentine’s Day on purpose.
Breaking up is difficult, but there is something particular about that first adult big love break up. To me, “first adult big love” signifies “I realistically thought I might spend the rest of my life with this person” or “my identity was tied to this relationship” or “what if the failure of a relationship this important means I’ll never be able to sustain a relationship?”
Before I give the list, can I explain a little why breakups can be so, so, so, so hard? Like, feel-like-you’re-dying hard?
The answer is attachment.
In order to keep adult caregivers giving care to babies in the face of horrible fluids, sleep deprivation, and the assassination of their sex lives, evolution in its wisdom has installed in mammals an “attachment” mechanism that bonds adult caregivers and offspring. The more dependent the offspring and the longer the dependency, the more powerful the attachment system. Humans have the most dependent offspring and the longest dependency (relative to lifespan) of any species. So boy howdy do we attach.
Here’s how it works, roughly: baby is handed over, parent is flooded with oxytocin, and the adorable face, cuddly warm body, and tiny little hands hook into parent’s and they’re linked forever and ever to this new life. The baby takes maybe 3 months to attach to an adult caregiver, and they’ll attach to whoever shows up when they cry.) And let’s be extra clear: the baby’s life depends on their adult caregivers. They can’t run away from predators or wash themselves to prevent infection or even thermoregulate particularly well – leave a baby on the ground and it will just freeze to death overnight, unless a lion eats it first. If their adult caregiver goes away, the baby will literally die. In fact, even with all their other needs met, a baby can die of loneliness if it is not held. Human life depends on connection.
Fast forward 12 years. Baby crosses into adolescence and, in a way that’s not clearly understood, the attachment system gets coopted from adult caregiver to peer romantic partner. We engage in the same behaviors – “attachment behaviors” – with our potential romantic partners as caregivers do with infants, like eye contact, hand holding, face stroking, smiling, hair touching… also, sex gets added to the repertoire.
If you’re heartbroken, you’ll probably recognize the experience of attachment: you feel connected to the other person. When things go wrong, you want to tell the person all about it. When the person goes away, you feel physical pain. Wherever that person is, that’s your home.
And then that person goes away.
When we’re infants, our lives quite literally depend on our adult caregiver coming when we need them. Well, when you’re an adult, your life doesn’t literally depend on your partner…
But your biology doesn’t know that. So when you break up, it feels like someone cracked open your ribcage and tore through your heart so that your blood gushes out onto the floor for you to slip on and fall in, so you crack your skull while you rapidly bleed to death.
You won’t actually die, it just feels like it.
They call it heartbreak for a reason, my friends.
Books:
How to Be An Adult by David Ricchio. This is the book that got me through a baaaaaaaaad breakup. It taught me who I am in a relationship and why, and then it taught me how to be better in a relationship and how to choose better partners.
Communion: the female search for love by bell hooks. There is more to love about this book than I can possibly describe here, but perhaps its greatest gift to women is that it tells us YES looking for love is natural and divine and part of our purpose on Earth. Human beings are not designed to be alone, we are designed to oscillate between connection and autonomy, and yet the mainstream world would have us believe our longing for communion is “immature.” Fuck that noise, and read this book.
When Things Fall Apart by the inimitable Pema Chodron. Look, I’m always telling people to turn toward their difficult feelings with kindness and compassion, and that’s all well and good, but Pema Chodron tells you how to do it, what kinds of obstacles you may face as you try, and she’ll probably make you laugh while she does it.
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. If what you’re looking for is not advice or philosophy but just gorgeous humanity and prose like honey, this is for you. You have wisdom inside you and you want someone to tell you what you know, and you want them to put it better than you ever could.
After the Breakup: A Self-Love Journal: Prompts and Practices to Help You Get Over Your Ex by Lindsey Dortch Brock. This one’s brand new and I haven’t had a chance to read it myself yet, but it was recommended to me as a good resource, and sometimes you need a good workbook, not just something to read.
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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Signed copies of Come As You Are can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.
Stay safe and see you next time.
