Love will tear us apart … again (… and repeat)

When Joy Division’s Ian Curtis penned the words to what would become the post-punk anthem “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, little did he realise the sociological profundity of his words. While Curtis’ lyrics reflect the intensely personal problems he was experiencing at the time in his marriage to Deborah Curtis, I argue that the thumping repetition of that chorus captures something about what’s going on in our contemporary world(s) of love and intimacy.

It would seem (a “seem” based on my PhD research) that love, possibly more than ever, is “tearing us apart” as “postmodern” men and women are forced to keep up with a culture that can’t keep still or hold its shape, a culture which - as Zygmunt Bauman, the poster boy of contemporary social theory, might say - is preoccupied with “moving on” and “letting go”.

I want to share a fragment of this story about love and “moving on” culture, based on my own voyeuristic peering into people’s online diaries (or blogs as they’re known) and follow-up interviews I did with them.

First, we meet Dolly, 27-year-old female lawyer from Sydney; second AmberFire, a 25-year-old female student from Melbourne; and lastly Supergirl, a 26-year-old female supermarket attendant.

AmberFire, talking about her current problems in love, kick-starts the story:

I have my doubts about my ability to commit to this relationship sometimes, but I know it's only me being weak. In actuality, I KNOW I can commit to this, but sometimes, like I quite often have in the past, I yearn for what will not be mine. You never know what’s around the corner.

While AmberFire attributes her inability to commit to a psychological failing - to being “weak” - she inadvertently reveals how much of her inability to commit is linked to the ambient fear of missing out on something better in the future. She yearns for what’s not hers due to an apparent preoccupation with the idea that there might be something better “around the corner”.

Dolly, writing on some of the anxieties she has regarding her current intimate relationship adds another thread to this narrative:

I have a great relationship right in front of me and I’m freaking out because I’m not sure I’m ready for it. Is this the last person I’ll ever have sex with? How can I know this so soon? What if I’m wrong, and I’m missing out on years of youth and f*cking and experience out on my own.

Dolly explains, in the typical self-conversation style of the blog genre, how she is “strange” because just at the moment she thinks she’s ready for a “meaningful” and “sustainable” relationship her head “becomes full of thoughts about the things I have yet to do with my life on my own”.

While AmberFire and Dolly’s orientation could be rightfully theorised as part of the general consumer push to be always “upgrading”, this is not solely about “upgrading for the sake of upgrading”, but also upgrading due to a fear that the current “product” might be inferior, faulty or soon to be superseded.

Psychologically this plays out as a temptation: until you try another product - maybe a more feature packed model - you’re bound to the anxiety provoking position “of never knowing”. AmberFire’s “around the corner” aptly represents how the future bomb of experience, pleasure and excitement can be a compelling pull in contemporary love.

Our last blogger, Supergirl, introduces a related, but different version of “moving on” culture. After traversing between ending her love relationship because “she can’t promise him anything”, then “giving the relationship another go”, and then “starting to feel trapped all over again”, Supergirl decides she must finish the relationship.

She tells her man how “his expectations are too high” and that he “needs a promise” that she “couldn’t give”. Similar to Dolly, Supergirl psychologises the reason for this as some deep-seated aspect of her personality - “its not because of what has happened but because that is who I am … I don’t commit, I can’t commit”.

In AmberFire, Dolly and Supergirl’s worlds, commitment and long-termism look like obstacles blocking more amazing loves, more amazing sex and more amazing connections in the future. The reasoning begins to look like: “while the relationship I’m in might be good, who knows what I might be missing out on” (AmberFire).

We’re left wondering just how “weak”, “strange” or “personality” based these orientations to love and intimacy are? The other question, of course, is whether this is a story solely reflective of young women’s experiences or actually part of a broader societal trend. My research and the social theory suggests the latter.

Arguably, AmberFire, Dolly and Supergirl’s individual stories of commitment-avoidance can be understood in terms of broader life-orientations that have become prevalent in contemporary social conditions.

As Bauman tells us in Life in Fragments (1995:91) “time is no more a river, but a collection of ponds and pools”. In this flattened, non-linear version of time, avoidance of fixation and the ability to keep moving - preferably running - become the rules of the game. In this experience of time, we are bound to what the sociologist Thomas Eriksen (1991) has insightfully dubbed the “tyranny of the moment”. For Eriksen, the moment is tyrannical in the sense that singular points of time have become filled to the brim with possibility and opportunity. The problem is, you just never know when you’ve found that “big bang moment”, that life-changing experience, that “peak experience” (Bauman, 1997) - was it that moment, is it this moment or will it be the moment around the corner?

This compulsive search for that “big bang moment” creates a social world conducive to deleting, forgetting and replacing (Bauman, 1997:2000). In other words, AmberFire, Dolly and Supergirl might be understood as everyday expressions of a culture that encourages a psychological disposition to keep “moving on” - to constantly uproot oneself - in the search for that heavenly, awe-inspiring, life-changing moment.

For these contemporary Australian subjects, love is just another intimation of a social world who’s inhabitants are desperate for connection - ultimate connection - and who are prepared to tear things apart to achieve it.