In our last post, we looked the situation of a person (whom we called Amy) who considers breaking up with her partner (Bill) for another person (Carlos), and compared it to a breach of contract, pointing the various similarities and differences between a contractual commitment and a romantic one. We ended up focusing on Amy?s decision in terms of her responsibilities to herself and to Bill, and now we?ll turn the spotlight on Bill and see how he would deal with a break-up?once again finding some parallels in contract law.
So let?s say Amy does break up with Bill to be with Carlos. Bill won?t take the news well, naturally, even if he accepts that Carlos may make Amy happier than he does. Even if he was sincere when he told Amy she should leave him if she found someone better, nonetheless he hoped that she would always feel Bill was the best for her and that he would always be the one to make her happy. When Amy left, it revealed to him that no, he was not the best for her, at least not anymore. Inevitably, this will lead him to question the relationship, his actions in it, everything he did and said, and everything Amy did or said, looking for clues to explain what happened?especially if he felt everything was going well in the relationship. Even if he does not resent Amy for leaving, even if he does wish her well and hopes she finds happiness with Carlos (or someone else down the line), Bill still feels horrible because of what her leaving says about him.
Would Bill feel differently if Amy had broken up with him not for Carlos, but simply because she was no longer happy in the relationship? Differently, perhaps, but it is hard to say if he?d feel better or worse. On the one hand, Amy is essentially saying that being alone (at least for the time being) is better than being with Bill; if solitude is the baseline, then being with Bill falls below that. It is one thing to come to the realization that she finds another man more attractive and desirable, but another entirely to think that she prefers being alone to being with him (especially if he knows she is not the type of person who enjoys being alone).
On the other hand, if Amy left Bill without going directly to Carlos, that leaves Bill without a focal point or target for potential jealousy and hurtful comparisons. (He may yet have these feelings when, down the line, he hears that Amy has taken up with someone else, especially if he hasn?t yet come to terms with the break-up.) Bill realizes Amy wasn?t happy, and he knows?that one reason she left may have been?to find someone that will make her happier, but it may be better for him that she didn?t leave him for one specific person. As before, he may feel this reflects poorly on him, which he will deal with in good or bad ways, but in this case he doesn?t have to compare himself to one person in particular. (Imagine how he would have felt had Carlos been in the picture for a while, and Bill had known that Amy was attracted to him, with all the anxiety that comes with it. Not an unfamiliar situation to many, I imagine.)
* * *
Can we put a positive spin on this for Bill? We can, and oh so surprisingly it comes from another application of contract law. (Technically it?s tort law, but it?s a case dealing with a broken commitment, so it's all good.) In a recent blog post at The Volokh Conspiracy, law professor Eugene Volokh discusses a 2012 South Carolina case, Campbell v. Robinson (S.C. App. 2012), in which a jilted fianc?e was awarded damages for ?breach of promise to marry.? This decision was based on a 1984 state precedent, Bradley v. Somers (1984), that reads:
Damages for breach of promise to marry are confined to those relating to the position the rejected spouse (Christine) would have held had she married the appellant. She is entitled to recover for the loss of the pecuniary and social advantages of the promised marriage. Also, her mental anguish, humiliation, and injury to health and psyche are elements of damages. In addition, she may recover for losses sustained from expenditures made in preparation of marriage. The jury may consider the monetary value of a marriage which would have given Christine a home.
Volokh finds this anachronistic; he is, however, sympathetic to suing to recover the financial costs involved, such as those of planning a wedding, plane tickets for guests, and so forth.
More generally, he puts a positive spin on the situation?lawyers are, after all, such an optimistic lot! He writes that ending an engagement?or, more generally, a relationship?can be seen as an advance warning that the relationship was headed for rocky waters:
Given that the groom no longer wants to marry, it seems much better to avoid what is likely a doomed marriage than to go through with it and then deal with a likely divorce. Better figure out the incompatibility before the wedding rather than after.
This is how Bill can look at his break-up with Amy: as a signal that the relationship may not have been as solid as he thought. After the pain has subsided, he may come to realize that it was better to find this out early, rather than after they made further commitments (such as marriage or buying a house). As I wrote in an earlier post, he shouldn?t take the failure of the relationship as a personal failure, but instead as a signal that he and Amy were not a good fit.
Looking at Bill?s situation this way reinforces the point that any disappointment in life, whether in the realm of love, work, or other goals, brings lessons along with the pain. The hurt subsides, but the things you can learn from the experience will hopefully last for the rest of your life. Bill will learn from this experience, identifying ways in which he and Amy did not fit as well as he thought they did, signs he may have missed that could have suggested problems in the relationship before Carlos came along, and things he may have done (or failed to do) to make the relationship stronger. (This critical reflection is worthwhile as long he doesn't take it too far and consider his relationships failures to be personal failures.)
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