We're used to thinking of heartbreak as one thing, a single calamity with a single sort of pain.
But anyone who's been through more than one ending knows a stranger truth.
Not all unwilling endings hurt the same.
There are, on closer inspection, three distinct sorts of heartbreak.
It's worth going through them in ascending order of pain, for what distinguishes them tells us something unexpected about what heartbreak actually is.
The first and least painful variety we might call trying but failing.
This is the relationship that ends because of incompatibilities that cannot, despite a lot of effort, be worked through.
Crucially, two people know what the issues are.
One person plays too much golf, someone needs to live abroad, they want different sorts of sex.
The problems have names.
