What I’ve learned about heartbreak from... performing comedy

Through making others laugh, stand-up Rosie Wilby was able to process her own pain

“Sharing my sadness made me feel a lot lighter”

y big break-up took place in the unfurling moments of 2011. Just as the vapour trails of the New Year fireworks faded, my girlfriend of five years dumped me by email. It seemed so cold of her to sever the connection without a face-to-face post-mortem. “What the hell just happened?” I thought, stunned by this abrupt emotional punch in the guts.

That January evening, I was due to perform a comedy gig. I frantically tried to cancel it; I was a mess and couldn’t see how I’d manage to stand on stage for an hour being funny. But the promoter convinced me that the crowd would be supportive – and they were right. It was one of the most raw, authentic performances I’ve ever given. There was a magical empathy in the room. When I suggested that I felt better once I’d corrected the spelling and punctuation in her email, the audience erupted into a belly laugh. Heartache, I realised, is universal, and sharing my shock and sadness made me feel lighter. I couldn’t stop smiling on the bus home. It was my first taste of the ways in which comedy could help me process feelings of rejection and upset.

When I got to the fifth anniversary of the breakup, I decided to revisit the dreaded email. Enough time had passed to write a show exploring the funnier side of the whole thing. The result was The Conscious Uncoupling, ironically named after Gwyneth Paltrow’s rather more amicable separation. I blended excerpts from the email with visits by three spoofy Dickensian ghosts, all played by me in a makeshift cloak. The ghost of my romantic past warned of the dangers of cherrypicking memories. “It’s a bit like saying, ‘Weren’t the ’90s great?’ and neglecting to mention OJ Simpson, Bill Clinton and skinny eyebrows,” I giggled onstage.

Through writing jokes, I learned that there was no way I was going to move on when I was convinced she was “the one”. In reality, the romance had been traumatic all along. She hadn’t come out to her parents and I struggled with the invisibility that enforced. Hearing the audience laugh as I recalled the time she tried to make me feel better by saying that her parents enjoyed Brokeback Mountain (“It’s hardly the most optimistic portrayal of gay relationships!”) made me feel understood.

I felt buoyed by the empathetic responses of my audiences and realised that the biggest heartbreak of all had been staying in a situation that wasn’t right for me. I’m now in a balanced relationship that feels both secure and sexy. I used to joke on stage about the confusing myriad uses of the word “love”. I’d say, “I love chocolate and I love my girlfriend. One of those is an insatiable, obsessive craving… and the other is how I feel about my girlfriend,” as if my partner was a boring salad. My new girlfriend, Suz, is that elusive menu option: chocolate salad. Having a job that allows me to create a constant dialogue about the big things, such as love, emotions and recovery, helped me to make a better choice this time around. Rosie Wilby is the author of Is Monogamy Dead? and host of The Breakup Monologues podcast