In 1774, an as yet relatively unknown German author wrote a book entitled “The Sorrows of Young Werther” about a young man who falls in love with a woman he cannot have, and while recovering from a broken heart falls into a spiral of despair eventually ending with his taking his own life. This book touched the hearts of men and women on such a deep level that it spawned the first ever recorded spate of ‘copycat suicides’ in which young people all over Europe took their own lives in the name of love inspired by Young Werther.

The authors name was Goethe, and it even touched Napoleon Bonaparte so deeply that he carried a copy of the book with him throughout Egypt and wrote a soliloquy in Werther’s style.

Goethe was without a doubt a brilliant author, but more than literary genius, his book showed that the pain of a broken relationship or the torment of trying to get one’s ex back can be extraordinarily debilitating. It is a pain that men and women around the world throughout the ages have struggled to come to terms with.