Ex-cruciating
My dislike of talking about ex-lovers with Chloe was perhaps part of the same phenomenon of wanting things to last for ever. These ex-lovers were reminders that situations I had at one point thought to be permanent had proved not to be so, and that my relationship with Chloe might undergo a similar fate. […]
The tragedy of love is that it does not escape the temporal dimensions. When one is with a current lover, there is a particular cruelty in the thought of one’s indifference towards past loves. There is something appalling in the idea that the person for whom you would sacrifice anything for today might in a few months cause you to cross the road to avoid them. I realized that if my love for Chloe constituted the essence of my self at that moment, then the definitive end of my love for her would mean nothing less than the death of a part of me.
From Essays in love, by Alain de Botton.
