When the Love of Your Life Isn't the One You End Up With

Originally published 2017-02-20.

Photo: Marija Mandić / Stocksy

Yes, it is possible to meet the love of your life and still not spend your life with them. Many people carry one relationship that shaped them more than any other, even though it ended. That ending does not cancel what the relationship was. The years, the lessons and the person you became while you were together all remain real, whether the story closed with a wedding, a slow drift apart or a goodbye neither of you wanted.

This idea was put beautifully by the writer Heidi Priebe in a short essay for Thought Catalog, later shared widely through HuffPost. Below we look at what she was getting at, why so many readers recognised themselves in it, and what psychology research says about finding meaning in a love that did not last.

The idea behind the essay

Priebe opens with a confession that surprises many readers: she describes herself as fairly relaxed about modern dating and not someone waiting to be swept away. Yet she still believes in what she calls “Big Love”, because she has lived through one. She describes it as the kind of bond that starts as a fire and settles into a steady warmth that lasts for years.

Her central point is simple and a little uncomfortable. Fairy tales promise that the great love will also be the permanent one. Real life does not always cooperate. A couple can love each other fully and still discover that they cannot build a shared future.

In her words, sometimes we meet the loves of our lives, but we do not get to keep them.

Why a deep love can still end

The essay lists the practical reasons that love on its own cannot fix, and they match what couples and counsellors describe every day:

• Different life plans. One partner dreams of a quiet house in the country and children; the other wants a fast career in a big city.
• Different appetites for the world. One wants to travel and explore, the other feels safest close to home.
• Illness and circumstance. Health problems, distance, family duties or loss can end a relationship that neither person chose to leave.
• Faith and values. Religious or moral differences can become impossible to bridge once real decisions arrive, such as how to raise children.
• Personal struggles. Love cannot rescue someone who is not ready to change, and staying can sometimes mean being pulled down too.

Priebe adds that letting go can itself be an act of love: two people releasing each other because they want the other to have a full life. Other times, she notes, there is no choice at all.

What research says about love that ends

The comfort in this essay is not just poetic. Psychologists who study breakups have found that, for many people, the end of an important relationship eventually brings growth alongside the grief.

A well-known 2003 study by Ty Tashiro and Patricia Frazier, published in Personal Relationships under the title “I'll never be in a relationship like that again”, asked recently separated students what positive changes, if any, had followed their breakup. Most reported some, such as greater confidence, better insight into what they need from a partner and improved skills for future relationships.

Later research points the same way. A 2018 study by Kansky and Allen, which followed 160 young adults, found that breakups could be associated with positive outcomes in the long run, especially when people understood why the relationship had ended. Work by Slotter, Gardner and Finkel (2010) showed something many people feel without naming: after a serious relationship ends, part of the pain is a shaken sense of self, the question of “who am I without you?” Rebuilding that identity takes time, and it is normal to feel unsteady while it happens.

There is also a reassuring finding about how we predict pain. Research by Eastwick and colleagues (2008) found that people tend to overestimate how distressed they will feel after a breakup and for how long. The heartbreak is real, but it usually fades faster than we expect.

Rewriting the story is not required

A common reaction after a painful ending is to shrink the relationship in hindsight: to tell yourself it was never that special, or that the person was never right for you. Sometimes that is true, and seeing it clearly is healthy. But when the love really was deep, rewriting it can leave you with a strange emptiness, as if a whole chapter of your life never counted.

Priebe argues against this. Some people, she writes, can give you more love in a single year than others manage in fifty, and teach you more in a day than others do in a lifetime. The length of a relationship is not the same as its weight.

Seen this way, the question changes from “Why didn't it last?” to “What did it give me?” Gratitude does not have to mean wanting the person back. It can sit next to relief, sadness or a firm decision never to return.

Practical ways to honour a love that ended

If you are still carrying a relationship like this, a few approaches tend to help more than either pretending it never mattered or replaying it endlessly:

• Name what you learned. Write down three things the relationship taught you about what you want, what you offer and what you will not accept again. Benefit-finding of this kind is linked in research with better adjustment after a breakup.
• Understand the “why”. A clear, honest story about why it ended, without blaming only one person, is one of the strongest predictors of moving forward well.
• Rebuild the parts of you that went quiet. Return to friends, hobbies and goals you may have set aside. A broader sense of self makes losses easier to carry.
• Don't race to replace them. Looking for an even bigger love to erase the old one puts a heavy burden on anyone new. Let the next relationship be its own thing.
• Lean on people. Talking with trusted friends helps. If sadness lasts for months or begins to affect sleep, work or daily life, talk to a doctor or a licensed counsellor.

Common myths about “the one”

“If it was real love, it would have lasted.”

Lasting depends on compatibility, timing, health, values and choices, not on the intensity of feeling alone. Real love and a shared future are related, but they are not the same thing.

“You only get one great love.”

Plenty of people go on to build a second, different and equally meaningful partnership. A past love can make a future one wiser rather than smaller.

“Holding on to good memories means you are not over it.”

Remembering fondly is different from being stuck. Being stuck usually shows up as not being able to function, compare or move; warm memory simply means the experience mattered.

A blessing rather than a tragedy

Priebe closes her essay by turning the loss around. Meeting a great love and then parting from it, she suggests, need not be the biggest tragedy of your life; it can be one of its biggest gifts. Not everyone gets to experience a love like that even once.

That is perhaps the most freeing part of her message. You are allowed to be grateful for someone without needing them to still be in your life, and to let a relationship be complete even though it did not last forever.

Sources: Original essay by Heidi Priebe (Thought Catalog), author of The First New Universe; republished via HuffPost. Research summary: Breakup (Wikipedia, citing Tashiro & Frazier 2003; Slotter et al. 2010; Eastwick et al. 2008; Kansky & Allen 2018). Photo: Marija Mandić / Stocksy.