Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning

As a woman with a husband and other partners, philosopher Carrie Jenkins knows that love is complicated.

Love is most often associated with happiness, satisfaction and pleasure. But it has a darker side we ignore at our peril. Love is often an uncomfortable and difficult feeling. The people we love can let us down badly. And the ways we love are often quite different to the romantic ideals society foists upon us. Since we are inevitably disappointed by love, wouldn’t we be better off without it?

No, says Carrie Jenkins. Instead, we need a new philosophy of love, one that recognizes that the pain and suffering love causes are a natural, even a good part of what makes love worthwhile. What Jenkins calls sad love offers no bogus happy ever afters . Rather, it tries to find a way properly to integrate heartbreak and disappointment into the lived experience of love.

It’s time we liberated love.