Being Human
by Aadam Qadeer
When Love Leaves
This episode begins with Khalil Gibran because he names something essential: that Love, real Love, is a force that moves through us, crowns us, breaks us, and leaves us changed. From there, I explore heartbreak not as a personal failure but as an initiation, a psychic event that reveals the self we only ever glimpsed through another’s gaze. We do not simply lose a person when love ends; we lose the mirror that showed us our own radiance. And so heartbreak feels like inner collapse, a disappearance of the self we became in their presence. I look at intimacy versus relationship, the haunting that follows loss, and why the end of love destabilises us so profoundly. Heartbreak does not just remove another from our life; it removes the version of ourselves that came alive in their eyes. What follows is a scramble for meaning, identity, and coherence, an attempt to understand who we are without the reflection that once confirmed us. This episode is not about getting over someone. It is about listening to heartbreak, to what love was trying to show you, to the younger self who still wants to be seen, and to the adult self emerging in the wreckage. Heartbreak is a summons, an invitation to reclaim the self you discovered through another, and to recognise that the reverence you once saw reflected was never theirs; it was yours. You can find the full transcript and my other work at www.aadamqadeer.com