‘When Jo Elvin, the editor of this magazine, asked me if I’d like to write something, I said “I love the readers of Glamour. It would be an honor to write something for them.” Easy. Only it hasn’t been easy. I’ve not really known what to say, where to start or how to finish. I’ve begun various bits and pieces, but they never really felt right. I would wander around looking for inspiration but kept coming back to the same subject: heartache. Broken hearts. I don’t know why. But it feels like matters of the heart are never that far away.
It was 3pm on a cold, wet Thursday and I was killing time in a cafe. On the table next to me, a young couple were deep in conversation. So deep that neither of them noticed the person less than two feet away pretending to read a newspaper while blatantly listening to their every word. I didn’t know their names, or where they were from, but I knew exactly the conversation they were having. They had broken up a while ago and were having their first face-to-face meeting since the split. It was clear that one of them had been hurting, hadn’t entirely moved on and had been begging via the occasional drunken phone call: “Please, just see me one more time. I…I…I (hic!) love you!” It was tense, and at times, incredibly sad.
The saddest part was listening to the small talk in between the pauses. Two people who had clearly known each other for so long, and so intimately, were reduced to chit chat about work and family. “How’s your mum’s dog?” said one of them, so painfully that it was clear all they wanted to do was shout “I don’t care about the dog! I just need answers to the million questions I have about why you cheated on me!” Then i heard something I will never forget. A line that could have come straight from a film: “Loving you was not the mistake I made. It was the two years I wasted waiting for you to love me back.”
I was gobsmacked and in awe at the same time. Gobsmacked because of the stealth way it was delivered- not with venom, but with resigned sadness. And in awe of this person who had said the very thing I had felt so often but never been able to vocalise. I left the cafe and told my friends about the line I had heard. And what’s really interesting is that they all had almost exactly the same response: “Aww bless her. Poor thing, she’s probably too good for him. Bloody men!” Except the thing is, the person saying it wasn’t a woman. It was a man. Not one of my friends had considered that this downtrodden empty vessel could be a man. It got me thinking about why this is. Why heartache isn’t a symptom we associate with men. It’s seen as weak or over-emotional, yet every man I know has experienced it and been hurt by it.
Men are from Mars and women from Venus, right? Or is it the other way around? Either way, I disagree. Deep down, when things really matter, we all act the same. In times of extreme joy or grief, we all feel the same. Men just hide it because, well, that’s what men are supposed to do. When a girl is dumped, her friends rally around her and talk it out. And yet for us men, it’s a slap on the back and, at best, a comment like, “pull your socks up mate and get on with it.”
It’s even reflected in songs. Someone Like You by Adele is the first single to sell a million copies this decade. But look to find the last big heartbreaker by a male artist and you’ll be met with Dry Your Eyes by The Streets, from 2004. Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my favourites, but compare the lyrics. Adele sings, “Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead.” While The Streets give us, “Dry your eyes mate… there’s plenty more fish in the sea.” I don’t know why men find it so hard to be open about issues of the heart. I know in my life things would have been easier if I could have been open about my feelings in times of hurt. I guess that’s what i’m trying to say. He may act like he doesn’t care, but he does. He just may not be able to express it.
The truth is that if a man is capable of love, he’s also capable of having his heart broken. He may not cry on the bus or run into the toilets at work, but believe me, sometimes he wants to. When I left the cafe, the young man was still trying to get to the bottom of why his ex-girlfriend had hurt him so much. All I wanted to do was put my arm around him and tell him it would all be OK. Because it will be. In my experience your heart is only ready to love once it’s been broken, because it’s only then that it can understand what love is.
Going through heartache? Remember tonight, when you lay your head down on your pillow, that someone, somewhere is laying their head down on their pillow too, and that person is going to see things in you that the last guy never did.. And you’ll be glad of the experience you’re going through now because it will have made you wiser, stronger and ultimately happier. We are all just one tiny moment away from happiness - and, like the guy in the cafe, I have a feeling it could be just around the corner’
