Why Some Couples Keep Making Up and Breaking Up

We have all witnessed the folie à deux, the kind of relationship in which high drama is mistaken for passionate love, leaving both parties in a state of limbo, unable to function either together or apart. Some may even have firsthand experience of this romantic phenomenon.

As the world processes the shocking news that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (aka Bennifer) are divorcing after a two-year marriage that reignited two decades after their first engagement was called off, it seems timely to explore why people return to failed relationships—essentially, why revisit the scene of emotional turmoil?

Relationship counsellor Nicola Foster believes it’s a fundamental human instinct to want to complete “unfinished business.”

“There’s a tenacity in us that says maybe this time it will be different, maybe this time the burning need that was not previously met somehow will be,” she explains.

Almost always, it’s the triumph of hope over expectation—but romantics are fueled by hope. Realistically, what draws lovers back is the drama, the action, and the intense emotions, even if they are mostly dark. Other relationships can appear monotonous in comparison to one that is perpetually breaking up and making up.

“One of the reasons I became a relationship therapist,” Foster adds, “is that I was hooked on a dramatic idea of romance. I loved novels like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.”

In both these 19th-century classics, the married heroines embark on disastrous love affairs that end tragically. Foster says she was captivated by the notion of love in which a perfect prince would fulfill her needs. She eventually realized that not only did no such prince exist, but that she should be addressing those needs herself.

A further complication is that self-improvement, like improving a relationship, requires work—a word we rarely associate with love. We tend to view love as an escape from work, a liberating realm of truth and beauty. As Lopez put it after her 2022 wedding to Affleck in Las Vegas: “Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient.”

Yet, love seemed far more patient when they were apart than reunited. You can maintain a fantasy about someone when they’re not around, but it’s almost impossible to do so while living together and sharing everyday routines. Even Hollywood superstars with presumably separate bathrooms can’t sustain unrealistic expectations amid mundane familiarity.

Watchers of Bennifer 2.0 say it was a marriage between two people whose mutual attraction far outweighed their compatibility.

Affleck and Lopez are undoubtedly not the first couple to revisit a romance that had previously failed, though it’s hard to recall anyone who appeared more unhappy during the process. Their long faces likely had a lot to do with unwanted paparazzi attention, but celebrity-watchers of Bennifer 2.0 long argued that the marriage was between two individuals whose mutual attraction far surpassed their compatibility.

In this respect, they resemble the famous and tempestuous couple, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who married and divorced twice. Their relationship was characterized by grand gestures of devotion and profound displays of despair.

Their romance was tumultuous, fueled by large quantities of alcohol and a celebrity spotlight, but the underlying dynamic, says Foster, is a common one. “There’s one person, Taylor, seeking more and seeking reassurance, and the other, Burton, who feels validated by that role yet wants to pull away and gain more autonomy.”

It was a romance that had everything but stability. They began an affair on the set of Cleopatra in 1963, a grandiose epic that depicts the intense but volatile relationship between Cleopatra and Roman general Mark Antony. Burton and Taylor arguably reached their cinematic pinnacle in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a film about a married couple who loathe yet depend on each other. According to their biographer, Roger Lewis, it was “their entire marriage, crammed into a single picture.”

After their first divorce in 1974, they remarried the following year and divorced again the year after that. Both continued to refer to the other as the love of their lives. Were they just as captivated by the romantic mythology of their relationship as their adoring fans?

Professionals often look at childhood for the roots of recurring behavioral patterns. Taylor, a child star, and Burton, one of 13 children with an alcoholic father and a mother who died when he was just two, had plenty of red flags.

“These kinds of relationships often conform to attachment theory and the fear of abandonment,” says Simy Jewell, a psychotherapist who counsels couples. “In my experience, the romantic pattern starts early and is repeated. It might be the first dramatic relationship at university that sets the tone for later relationships.”

Of course, there is another, somewhat haunting, possibility. Some couples can’t move on from a break-up because, deep down, they really are right for each other, and transcendent bliss with their soulmate awaits if they can overcome their trivial differences.

Neither Jewell nor Foster definitively rule out this possibility, but they haven’t seen much evidence of it in their counseling rooms. Couples can successfully reunite, says Foster, but only if they’re willing to address their issues. “Differences are healthy – there has to be some ongoing pushing and pulling – but they need to be acknowledged.”

Perhaps Affleck and Lopez were meant to be together but never quite grasped what being together meant. Surely only a cold-hearted pragmatist would completely discount the possibility of Bennifer 3.0.

Source: The Guardian