Carrie Jenkins - Sad Love

1 Cover

2 Title Page Sad Love Romance and the Search for Meaning Carrie Jenkins polity

3 Copyright Copyright © Carrie Jenkins 2022 The right of Carrie Jenkins to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2022 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3960-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951320 The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

4 Preface Notes

5 Acknowledgements

6 Introduction Notes

7 1 The Paradox of HappinessAs dreamers do Happiness cannot be pursued I give myself very good advice (but I very seldom follow it) The taming of happiness Notes

8 2 The Romantic Paradox Mad love The pursuit of happy ever after Notes

9 3 DaimonsThe ghosts of old meanings Eudaimonia vs. the Paradox of Happiness Eudaimonia vs. the Romantic Paradox Job-crafting Love-crafting Notes

10 4 Know ThyselfChoice problems Search for the hero inside yourself If it makes you happy (why the hell are you so sad)? If you’re eudaimonic and you know it Notes

11 5 Eudaimonic LoveLove and “negative” emotions Production and consumption Buy or build Now what? Notes

12 End User License Agreement

1 Cover

2 Table of Contents

3 Title Page

4 Copyright

5 Preface

6 Acknowledgements

7 Introduction

8 Begin Reading

9 End User License Agreement

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Carrie Jenkins

polity

Copyright © Carrie Jenkins 2022

The right of Carrie Jenkins to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2022 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3960-4

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951320

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

When I set out to write a book about love in 2017, I was not happy. I was pretty sad. But I was still in love, or at least so I thought. All the messages from the culture around me were telling me what they had always told me: that being in love was about being happy. Being happy ever after. Happy with someone. Happy together.

I had some questions. What if I’m not happy? What if I’m sad – or worse, depressed? Does that mean I’m no longer in love? Am I now unloving? Unlovable?

I desperately hoped the answer to the last two was “no.” And I strongly suspected that was the answer. Even though I wasn’t happy, and didn’t know when, how, or even whether I would become happy in the future, I didn’t seriously doubt that I was in love with my partners. So instead, like any good logician, I questioned the other assumption: the one about how being in love means being happy.

Being a philosopher by tendency, as well as by academic training, I wanted to think this assumption through, so that I could talk back to it (in my own head, first of all) with some confidence and conviction. Why had I been associating romantic love with happiness? What is the point of that association? Where does it come from? What are its effects?

Of course we all know that “happy ever after” comes from fairy tales, and we know fairy tales for what they are: fictions and fantasies. 1Real love isn’t always happy. I knew that. But a fantasy is powerful, even when we know what it is. Our fantasies – our ideals – have a crucial part to play in shaping our lives. An ideal is something to strive for, something we can measure ourselves against and find ourselves wanting. Maybe I was still in love, but I was inclined to feel as if my sadness was a kind of failure condition for my relationships. Good love – ideal love – should be happy ever after, shouldn’t it? To say that the romantic “happy ever after” is unrealistic does nothing to diminish its status as an ideal, and hence its power to convince us we are falling short.