Roland Barthes offers up more ways to look at the lover’s situation. In his book on the subject, he defines some terms which help to analyze what goes on between two people. A couple of them seem particularly poignant to me at the moment:

Contingencies: Trivialities, incidents, setbacks, pettinesses, irritations, the vexations of amorous existence; any factual nucleus whose consequences intersect the amorous subject’s will to happiness, as if chance conspired against him.

Images: In the amorous realm, the most painful wounds are inflicted more often by what one sees than by what one knows.