The confluence of JJ’s ‘Wasted Love,’ the Coldplay kiss cam, and the end of my long-term relationship

Lately, I can’t stop listening to JJ’s “Wasted Love,” the emotive, operatic anthem that won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The first time I heard it, something in me cracked, and it’s been haunting me ever since, particularly now.

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JJ, a.k.a. Johannes Pietsch, is a young gay Austrian-Filipino opera singer who blends classical vocals with electronic dance beats in a way that feels both ancient and painfully modern. In “Wasted Love,” he sings from a place many of us probably know all too well, of having so much love to give and then, suddenly, no one there to receive it.

“Now that you're gone, all I have is wasted love, this wasted love,” JJ sings.

Is a love that ends wasted love? Or is it something to keep close to your heart so that it is always cherished? And is it the time spent on love, rather than love itself, that's really wasted? Precious time, with precious memories, that get erased when love fizzles out.

There’s something else too, something that cuts deeper the more I listen. The song seems to embody the very essence of the relationship I’m mourning. On one hand, there's the soaring elegance of opera, timeless, grounded like a relic. That’s me.

And there’s a pulsing, contemporary dance beat, youthful, futuristic, boundless. Seventeen years between us. I was the opera. He was the beat. Somehow, for a long time, we made music. But the end now consists of the immense pain of an archetypal tragic opera, “Wasted, wasted, wasted, wasted, wasted, wasted, wasted, wasted … love,” JJ pleads.

I’ve been with the love of my life for the last 17 years, with the last couple of years admittedly a question mark. He’s still young and building a new life, while I am begrudgingly aging, with some hiccups. I’m 61. I workout gruelingly to stay in shape, and like everyone else my age, I think I look 10 years younger than I am.

But still.

Underneath my optimistic, sunny veneer lies a true fatalist, perpetually convinced that when something is good, it will inevitably be yanked away. I don’t know whether it’s because my dad died in my arms when I was 12, so there’s a consistent fear of abandonment, or because I feel I don’t deserve the good things in life. Perhaps it’s a combination of both.

Over three years ago, he broke up with me for the first time. Casually, or so it seemed. I was shattered. I attempted suicide. I didn’t do that because of him. That’s a misconception. I tried it because I too was done with me.

I don’t think he ever really came back after that moment. Despite making positive changes in my life since that dark day, I’ve been in denial. I’m stubbornly clinging to something that’s been slowly slipping through my fingers.

He has a new degree, and he’s starting a new job and a new life. He deserves it. I, on the other hand, am being pushed to the precipice of the autumn of my life. Am I now a cautionary tale? Older, alone, and staring down the one fear I wrote about when I turned 55, that is, of dying a lonely man?

Throughout my life, I always wanted to get married and have a long life with someone. He never wanted to get married, so I held on to the foolish wish that maybe he’d change his mind.

Coincidence or not, I just launched a book I coauthored about marriage equality. The irony hasn’t been lost on me. I was writing about the kind of binding love I craved and never had, and most likely never will.

Last week, a tech CEO famously got caught on the kiss cam at a Coldplay concert near Boston with his company’s head of HR. They were warmly embracing, and then all hell broke loose. He’s married with two kids. He was publicly affectionate with someone other than his wife. I watched the video in agony instead of laughing at it and the memes it generated.

To me, it was awkward, messy, and human. It was also lethal. My thoughts were consumed by who was on the other side of either of those two people. For the CEO, I imagined that his wife would be grieving deeply and agonizingly contemplating the end of their relationship. What a horrible position to be in, realizing it was all falling apart.

That’s what it feels like when love leaves you. You don’t think about redemption or therapy. You think about the house of cards that is love, tumbling down. “Love is fleeting” is not an overused axiom. When it’s alive, it’s Godlike. And when it goes away, it’s satanic.

I’ve been thinking about the kiss cam moment too while listening to “Wasted Love” on a constant loop. Trying to make sense of it all. Understanding that when love collapses it forces us to face questions we don’t want the answers to. Deniability over culpability and compatibility

Were the last 17 years, for me, wasted love? Was I fooling myself, thinking we’d grow old together? Was I so afraid of aging alone that I purposefully missed the signs,or ignored them that love would turn on me? And, was it all just a waste of time? After all is said and done, I’m right back where I started.

Like everyone else who has faced these questions, I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how to move forward. “Now that you're gone, can't fill my heart with wasted love,” JJ sings.

Is love ever truly wasted? Maybe all those years with someone meant something simply because we felt love so deeply that it’s impossible to try to make that disappear. Too many photos, too many reminders. Too many “You have memories to look back on today.” The remembrances are all-encompassing and all-consuming.

That’s why it’s so tough to let go when you’re holding on for dear life.

Heartbreak can make you feel like you’re adrift in a vast, cold ocean, unsure of where you will land. "I’m an ocean of love. And you're scared of water. You don′t want to go under. So you let me go under,” JJ relents.

If I’ve learned anything from JJ’s music and my own life, it's that there is power in giving voice to pain. In making beauty from sorrow. In admitting the truth, even when it hurts. Playwrights and screenwriters create comedy and drama about lost love. Musicians sing about it. And I can write about it, and that does provide a speck, albeit only a speck, of solace. But it’s something.

Because somewhere out there, someone else is listening to the same song, feeling the same ache. And maybe they’ll know they’re not alone.

If you or someone you know needs mental health resources and support, please call, text, or chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org for 24/7 access to free and confidential services. Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations. The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.

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