Spare a thought for Kanye West this Valentine’s Day

Kanye, mate, we’ve all been there. And we’re sorry that it hurts – particularly on days like today

‘Ye’ seems firmly stuck in the dark, reeling, painful first stages of the breakdown of his marriage (Getty Images)

I think we can all identify with Kanye West. We’ve all had painful break-ups; most of us will have been through (and recognise) the stages of grief involved with loss: from shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, loneliness and reflection – right through to the other side, where you start to see things in colour again.

The thing is, Kanye – or “Ye” as he’s now known – seems firmly stuck in the dark, reeling, painful first stages of the breakdown of his marriage to Kim Kardashian; and seeing it play out on social media is like watching a car crash, except the car is driven by a billionaire, and the road is Instagram, and that final, fatal patch of ice is shaped like Pete Davidson.

There we are, rubberneckers all, wanting to look away – but unable to – as Ye lurches giddily to his keyboard, tears pouring from his fingertips as he posts a picture of his kids (and who among us can help feeling sorry for those kids) as he types: “God please bring our family back together”.

We can’t help cringing as he’s booed at the Super Bowl; as he publishes yet another now-deleted post – this time about his former friend, Kid Cudi – dumping him from collaborating with him on his forthcoming album Donda 2, because he’s “friends with you know who”.

He’s previously accused Cudi of backstabbing him, posting a picture of the two of them together – and Cudi with Davidson and Timothée Chalamet from 2019 – on which he drew a red “X” over Davidson’s face and captioned it: “I JUST WANTED MY FRIEND TO HAVE MY BACK THE KNIFE JUST GOES IN DEEPER.”

It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. And it’s entirely, utterly relatable.

Who hasn’t wanted to scream at the cold, unflinching night sky when someone we love tells us something we can’t bear to acknowledge? When we hear the words “I don’t want to be with you anymore”, or (in Kim’s case), “I’ve chosen myself” and “I decided I’m going to make myself happy – and that feels really good”? That terrible, singular feeling of devastation, when it feels like you’re going to snap physically in two; when your body is an umbrella with broken spokes and nothing seems to fit together the right way anymore? We get it, Ye. We relate.

At those times and in those moments, when we want things to be okay so badly, we can (sometimes, some of us) act in increasingly desperate, desolate ways; can even resort to begging, or bad-mouthing our ex’s new beau, though none of us would brag about it. At those times, none of us are immune, no matter who we are or how much money we have (Ye gave new girlfriend Julia Fox and five mates brand new Birkin bags in honour of her birthday, recently, each costing a cool $10,000). We can all give new meaning to the word “unhinged” or “broken-hearted”.

These experiences of lost love can start early, too: there’s a sort of exquisite uniqueness to the kind of pain you get when you have your heart broken for the very first time. When my high school crush chose another girl over me, I listened to “Jesus to a Child” by George Michael for days and days on repeat, because it was the song we’d slow danced to – just once – at a bar mitzvah.

And, when I got dumped at Reading Festival in 2001 by my (then) punk rocker boyfriend, who had bleached blonde tips and an eyebrow ring (a bit like a wannabe Pete Davidson), I cried so hard that my face was puffy for days (it didn’t help that I had to find a tent to share with strangers, because we’d gone to the festival together).

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I’ve written poems in the name of lost love, I’ve stopped eating (or, conversely, drowned my sorrows in chocolate and cheese); I’ve made Spotify playlists which allowed me to wallow in melancholy; spent hours sobbing on the phone to friends with seemingly endless patience.

Heartbreak certainly doesn’t get any easier as you get older, either – the stakes can often be higher (like Ye, I know the pain of divorce, and the worry about how it will affect your kids) – but the one piece of advice I’d like to give to him, now, like a gift, is this: you will survive the dark times. It gets easier. The harder you’ve loved, the more you’ve lived.

Valentine’s Day can make it all feel worse, but it’s only a day. Tomorrow it will be something new; something brighter. And the old adage is true, Ye, even for you: this too shall pass.