I am sorry for offering you my confusion, I am sorry for ruining our trip to Paris, I am sorry for the unavoidable melodrama of it. I don't think I will ever cry again as much as I did aboard that miserable aeroplane, or be so torn by my emotions. You were so sweet to me, that's what made me cry all the more, other men would have told me to go to hell, but you didn't, and that's what made it so very difficult.
You asked me in the terminal how I could cry and yet still be sure. You must understand, I cried because I knew it could not go on, and yet there was still so much holding me to you. I realize I cannot continue to deny you the love you deserve, but that I have grown unable to give you. It would be unfair, it would destroy us both.
I shall never be able to write the letter which I would really want to write to you. This is not the letter I have been writing to you in my head for the last few days. I wish I could draw you a picture, I was never too good with a pen. I can't seem to say what I want, I only hope you'll fill in the blanks.
I will miss you, nothing can take away what we have shared. I have loved the months we have spent together. It seems such a surreal combination of things, breakfasts, lunches, phone calls in mid-afternoon, late nights at the Electric, walks in Kensington Gardens. I don't want anything to spoil that. When you've been in love, it is not the length of time that matters, it's everything you've felt and done coming out intensified. To me, it's one of the few times when life isn't elsewhere. You'll always be beautiful to me, I'll never forget how much I adored waking up and finding you beside me. I simply don't wish to continue hurting you. I could not bear for it slowly all to go stale.
I don't know where I will go from here. I will perhaps spend time on my own over Christmas or spend it with my parents. Will is going to California soon, so we'll see. Don't be unfair, don't blame him. He likes you very much and respects you immensely. He was only a symptom, not the cause of what's happened. Excuse this messy letter, its confusion will probably be a reminder of the way I was with you. Forgive me, you were too good for me. I hope we can stay friends. All my love . . .
7. The letter brought no relief, only reminders. I recognized the cadences and accent of her speech, carrying with it the image of her face, the smell of her skin – and the wound I had sustained. I wept at the finality of the letter, the situation confirmed, analysed, turned into the past tense. I could feel the doubts and ambivalence in her syntax, but the message was definitive. It was over, she was sorry it was over, but love had ebbed. At the end of a relationship, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches. I was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal, betrayal because a union in which I had invested so much had been declared bankrupt without my feeling it to be so. Chloe had not given it a chance, I argued with myself, knowing the hopelessness of these inner courts announcing hollow verdicts at four thirty in the morning. Though there had been no contract, only the contract of the heart, I felt stung by Chloe's disloyalty, by her heresy, by her night with another man. How was it morally possible this should have been allowed to happen?
It is surprising how often rejection in love is framed in moral language, the language of right and wrong, good and evil, as though to reject or not reject, to love of not to love, was something that naturally belonged to a branch of ethics. It is surprising how often the one who rejects is labelled evil, and the one who is rejected comes to embody the good. There was something of this moral attitude in both Chloe's and my behaviour. Framing her rejection, she had equated her inability to love with evil, and my love for her as evidence of goodness – hence the conclusion, made on the basis of nothing more than that I still desired her, that I was 'too good' for her. Assuming that she largely meant what she said and was not simply being polite, she had made the ethical point that she was not good enough for me, by virtue of nothing more than having ceased to love me – something she had deemed made her a less worthy person than I, a man who, in all the goodness of his heart, still felt able to love her.
But however unfortunate rejection may be, can we really equate loving with selflessness, and rejection with cruelty, can we really equate love with goodness and indifference with evil? Was my love for Chloe moral, and her rejection of me immoral? The guilt owed to Chloe for rejecting me depended primarily on the extent to which love could be seen as something that I had given selflessly - for if selfish motives entered into my gift, then Chloe was surely justified in equally selfishly ending the relationship. Viewed from such a perspective, the end of love appeared to be a clash between two fundamentally selfish impulses, rather than between altruism and egoism, morality and immorality.
According to Immanuel Kant, a moral action is to be distinguished from an amoral one by the fact that it is performed out of duty and regardless of the pain or pleasure involved. I am behaving morally only when I do something without consideration of what I may get in return for it, when I am guided solely by duty: '* (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Immanuel Kant (Harper Torchbooks, 1964).
For any action to be morally good, it is not enough that it should conform to the moral law - it must also be done for the sake of the moral law.’ Actions performed as a result of disposition cannot count as moral, a direct rejection of the utilitarian view of morality based around inclination. The essence of Kant's theory is that morality is to be found exclusively in the motive from which an act is performed. To love someone is moral only when that love is given free of any expected return, if that love is given simply for the sake of giving love.
I called Chloe immoral because she had rejected the attentions of someone who had on a daily basis brought her comfort, encouragement, support, and affection. But was she to blame in a moral sense for spurning these? Blame is surely due when we spurn a gift given at much cost and sacrifice, but if the giver has derived as much pleasure from giving as we derive from receiving, then is there really a case for using moral language? If love is primarily given out of selfish motivations (i.e. for one's own benefit even as it arises out of the benefit of the other), then it is not, in Kantian eyes at least, a moral gift. Was I better than Chloe simply because I loved her? Of course not, for though my love for her included sacrifices, I had made them because it made me happy to do so, I had not martyred myself, I had acted only because it accorded so perfectly with my inclinations, because it was not a duty.
12. We spend our time loving like utilitarians, in the bedroom we are followers of Hobbes and Bentham, not Plato and Kant. We make moral judgements on the basis of preference, not transcendental values. As Hobbes put it in his Elements of Law:
Every man calleth that which pleaseth and is delightful to him, good; and that evil which displeaseth him: insomuch that while every man differeth from other in constitution, they differ also one from another concerning the common distinction of good and evil. Nor is there such thing as agathon haplos, that is to say, simply good...’
Elements of Law, Thomas Hobbes (ed. Molesworth, 1839-45).