Staff Writer Jade Gerald
With the very recent public demise of some very high profile female celebrities including Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and Demi Moore (although still living). All talented women who’ve experienced the kind of fame and riches most of us could only ever dream of. Undeniably they’ve reached the top in their chosen professions, but when it comes to love seemed to have ultimately come unstuck.
Can their misfortunes be attributed to broken-heartedness? Heartbreak is recognised medically as a feeling of intense emotional pain or suffering after losing a loved-one through death, divorce or break-up and their actions would certainly fit this. What we’ve seen played-out is a familiar tale, boy meets girl they quickly fall in love and are soon inseparable. But all too soon one half (usually the male) begins to pull away in an attempt to regain some of the independence he once had and the female is left floored by this. In the case of the female celebrities mentioned each seemed to have ended up having ill-fated romances with men who in the end never really seemed to love them as much and as a result these women seemed to choose to self-medicate the pain away through the abuse of alcohol and drugs.
As women I’m sure that many of us can relate to having stayed in at least one 
relationship a little too long with the wrong person. But in the end we stood up, we dusted ourselves off and rejected the temptation to fully push the self-destruct button because we knew that things could and would get better.
Is heartache of this kind something only women go through? I don’t believe it is and there are many documented cases which show that men are particularly vulnerable to health related problems as a result of heartbreak. But on an emotional level relationships seem to be so very important to women as we often define ourselves through the connections we have with our friends, family and the person were dating, maybe in ways that the majority of men do not. So if relationships are so important to women then maybe it should come as no surprise that when they end or are going badly the pain often hits us hardest. And it’s the consequences of this pain that often show up in ways that we don’t always understand or society approve of.
So as we shake our heads with pity and sadness at the sometimes extreme behaviour of others let us never forget that in matters of the heart sometimes nothing but nothing makes any sense.
