Notes on Heartbreak: From Vogue’s Dating Columnist, the must-read book on love and letting go

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Perhaps no one ever forgets anyone. We keep parts of them inside us forever and they come out in the moments we need them. Like ghosts who can’t find their way to the afterlife.” This book spoke to my heart and the biggest infliction made against it. Encapsulating the trajectory of a broken heart, Lord put her own organs on the operating table and allows us to bear witness to her pain and, in it, find some solidarity on this unfair rite of passage. A book on love and loss to get the emotions (read: tears) flowing. One of this summer's most anticipated books * Bustle * Reading this book felt like cosmic intervention. It felt like this book was created for me, to help save me from my wallow and self pity in the wake of a recent, blindsiding breakup. Like most people I tend to shy away from the ugly parts of myself, denying their existence from myself and others. But Annie Lord in her unflinching honesty shows that these ugly parts aren’t ugly at all. Reading about Annie Lord’s pain, jealousy, anger, sorrow, self-pity, regret, and numbness left me feeling connected to her in a way I haven’t felt with many books. Annie Lord: It’s weird actually, a couple of times I’ve spoken to male friends for the column and quoted them [about why men might behave a certain way in dating]. And when they say stuff, I’m never satisfied with what they’re saying. Sometimes I feel I’m like, ‘no, I get you more than you get you,’ or ‘yeah, that’s not it.’ It just feels like the explanation a lot of men use for stuff feels very simple. Maybe they are simple but it feels like it can’t be that. But sometimes you are making yourself feel better via a very complex explanation for [men’s] actions that make out that you’re still hot and desirable, and they still want to have sex with you, and go out with you. It's just these external factors [preventing it].

It's a book about the best and worst of love: the euphoric and the painful, the beautiful and the messy.This stunning exploration of love and heartbreak from cult journalist and Vogue columnist Annie Lord, is so much more than a book about one singular break-up. It is an unflinchingly honest account of the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. Notes on Heartbreak is her most exposing work yet and I am keen to learn about how a young writer, who has effectively turned her love life into her career, found the experience of offering up something as confusing, devastating and unedifying as heartbreak for public consumption. According to anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, the pre-courtship stage is a lot longer now because “today’s singles appear to want to know everything about a potential partner before they invest their time, money and energy into initiating a formal commitment”. The date, she says, used to function as a “look-see”, whereas now it’s followed by long periods of friendship or casual sex before a more official “first date” is organised.

It's good, all of this - nearly everyone knows the specific, towering grief of being walked out on by the person whose limbs they woke up tangled in in the morning, but few write about it so directly, so unblinkingly.' - The Times Vogue dating columnist Annie Lord's debut, Notes on Heartbreak, is a visceral yet funny recollection of the breakdown of her five-year-relationship, told in her distinctive, lyrical style . . . I t's difficult to write about experiences as complex as love and heartbreak without sounding either cheesy or melodramatic, but somehow, Lord nails it. Anyone who's ever been unceremoniously dumped will find themselves furiously underlining the book's most resonant passages * The Best Books of 2022 - DAZED * The debut book from Vogue's dating columnist is heartbreaking, touching, funny - and one to be shared around all your friends who despair about modern dating, whether they're recovering from heartbreak or not * GRAZIA * How do you heal and get through a break up? Annie Lord is Vogue’s dating columnist. She joins Emma Barnett to talk about her debut book, Notes on Heartbreak. A candid exploration of the best and worst of love, she talks about nursing a broken heart and her own attempts to move on in the current dating climate; from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex’s new girlfriend and the sharp indignity of being ghosted. Corners of the brain that cause and respond to addiction can be activated by images or reminders of ex partnersAccepting that there were two of you in the relationship and that the end was not necessarily all your fault can be a liberation. Relationships are nuanced and a product of two people’s entire life stories until that point. They are multifaceted and intricate and layered. We can still be sad about the end, whilst also beginning to recognise the complexity of love and loss rather than a prolonged and painful fixation on our own inadequacies. Róisín Ingle

But it was reading about the science of heartbreak that had the biggest impact. “Saying, ‘I’m going through a breakup’ didn’t do what I was feeling justice. It felt too small, too ordinary.” So Lord sought out studies, learning things like, “The way your breathing adjusts to another person’s when you’re together for a long time, how in grief some people’s hearts really do break, or the fact that your brain craves that person the same way you would cocaine.” There will always be things only your ex would get, such as how typical it is that your parents have rearranged the living room so it “feels more open” even though now none of the sofas point towards the TV. You could try telling them but, for the third time, you will just end up sleeping together. Who is Annie Lord? I rudely knew nothing about the writer when I bought this book, but instead chose it on a visceral recognition of the title and the cover image connections/disconnections - when the bed space, physical and metaphorical, feels too big after a relationship change beyond the one sides control - in that moment the choice is whether to adapt, accept, and keep on the onward journey (embrace the space as it were) or analyse and pull the brakes on, stroke the space and regret so much - reach out and notice the absence. When you love something so deeply and truly, you see all of its flaws was the quote that I was reminded of early on with this, and from that I found it hard to step away from this strangely paced, dirty and brutal, non veneered internal monologue. No regrets from similar thoughts, and even though I wasn’t able to relate to the different circumstances and time stamps this is set in, the feelings from the ride are always realIt's good, all of this - nearly everyone knows the specific, towering grief of being walked out on by the person whose limbs they woke up tangled in in the morning, but few write about it so directly, so unblinkingly. * The Times * The main issue, I have found, is that nothing ever goes anywhere. People flake and when they’re not flaking, you are. Finding love feels like trying to hold on to water. And it’s through this inner dialogue that you become conscious of yourself as someone you can talk to and have a relationship with. I look at her now in that mirror and she’s me and I am her, and although we’re the same thing I see that we can talk to each other even if I will always know what’s coming because she, her, me, is the only thing I can count on to be there for the whole of my life.” It is an unflinchingly honest yet lyrical meditation on the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. Their conversation was so close to the themes and content of the book I’d just finished that later, as I left the train, I told the blue-haired woman that she must read it. “You have to read Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord when it’s out,” I said and instead of being annoyed that a random middle-aged stranger had eavesdropped on her conversation, she grasped the information like a life raft. “I will,” she said. “Thank you.”