"The half-life of love is forever." - Junot Diaz
(semi-spoiler alert)
This Is How You Lose Her is a story about love. It's love, but not that kind of romantic cheese only girls can find the heart to enjoy. On the contrary, Diaz's novel is about a cheating sex addict whose experience with love and relationship is all but romantic and cheesy. This Is How You Lose Her is that fascinating story centered around the all-too-common view of women as objects-- the idea that men are more interested in sex than relationships and commitment. Our sad protagonist only discovers his own destructiveness after the permanence of heartbreak.
The novel is an expert look into this dismaying perspective of women and relationships. Yet, while it may be dismaying in this culture, it seems to be quite prominent in Diaz's Dominican culture, where the patriarchal dominance of men diminishes the level of sanctity customarily associated with romantic relationships. And Yunior was exposed to this culture. His destructive father surely was not a help in the respect towards woman. His addiction to sex was certainly not helped when his rather old teacher offered him sex.
And when he finally found the love his life, he simply screwed it up. Did he know better? Sure-- but an addict is an addict. It was perhaps the shock of the heartbreak that causes his inner transformation, when he realizes that the half-life of love is forever. From there, Yunior can perhaps begin.
I actually had a different take from this (kind of). His cheating is bad and dooms his relationships, but when he apologizes and wants nothing more than love, the woman doesn't offer any. Of course, he shouldn't have cheated, but his failing realtionships show that you need mutual positive feelings to get a successful relationship- and if those feelings are undermined by cheating, then the relationship will crumble.
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