49 pages • 1 hour read
Colleen HooverUgly Love
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Duality of Pleasure and Pain
The connection between pleasure and pain features in the novel’s romantic relationships. The title, Ugly Love, embodies this theme. Hoover explores the duality of pleasure and pain through physical intimacy. While Tate and Miles physically derive pleasure from their acts, they always end in emotional pain, as Tate longs for something more while Miles desperately fears it. The novel’s explicitly sexual scenes build out this theme by showing the double-edged experience of pain and pleasure. Tate’s sexual experiences with Miles evoke both feelings, mimicking the way her overall relationship with Miles feels for most of the story.
The duality of pleasure and pain is the novel’s primary theme, which Hoover solidifies with the title and explores through the characters’ interactions and conversations. As the mentor, Cap encapsulates the novel’s crux: “I know the thought of confronting your past terrifies you. It terrifies every man. But sometimes we don’t do it for ourselves. We do it for the people we love more than ourselves” (293). To have pleasure with others in the future, it’s important to confront the pains of the past. Cap encourages Miles to face his traumatic pain because the joy of the people he loves will be worth it in the end. Hoover also includes a chapter from Rachel’s perspective to parallel Miles’s emotional journey and show that healing is a possibility:
For the first time, this impenetrable sadness that had become me was being broken by the brief, good moments with Brad. […] After a while, I began to notice that the good moments with Brad began to outweigh all the sadness. The sadness that was my life became the moments, and my happiness with Brad became my life. […] I was staring down at [Claire], holding her in my arms, and the tears were running down my cheeks. But I was crying good tears, and I realized at that moment that they were the first tears of happiness I had cried since the day I held Clayton in my arms (301).
Rachel shows Miles that the pleasure she derives from life eventually overshadowed her “impenetrable” pain. Rachel inspires Miles to be brave and face his trauma, just as Rachel was brave enough to love again. In opening her heart, Rachel was able to have another child and feel immense joy. To have the beautiful experience of falling in love with Brad and having Claire, a beautiful, healthy baby girl, Rachel had to risk feeling pain and let herself move past her trauma for the sake of a better future. Miles takes her message to heart and is both inspired by and proud of her for her growth. He, too, changes his mindset, even if his fears don’t instantly disappear.
By showing up at Corbin’s apartment to get Tate’s address, Miles risks emotional pain and a confrontation with Corbin. He allows himself to be vulnerable by sharing his feelings with Tate, even though he doesn’t know if she’ll still be open to hearing him out. Although Miles marries Tate and has a baby girl with her, he still holds onto the fear of pain. For example, he is afraid to look at his baby daughter, but when he does, he lets go of his fears: “I’m looking down at the perfection we created when it hits me. / It’s all worth it. / It’s the beautiful moments like these that make up for the ugly love” (322).
The idea of “ugly love” implies that there is no pleasure without pain. To love is to be vulnerable, and to seek pleasure is to risk losing it. Hoover suggests that although love can be inherently painful, the pleasure derived from shared romantic love can be even greater for those brave enough to live their truths.
Relationship Boundaries Versus Emotional Walls
In any healthy relationship, there must be clear and reasonable boundaries to ensure mutual respect and understanding. Hoover depicts what can happen when people fall into the trap of not understanding the importance of relationship boundaries or not knowing how to communicate them clearly. This is Tate’s key issue in the novel: She needs to learn how to establish healthy boundaries. She can love as strongly and deeply as she wants, but she also needs to love and honor herself. She cannot always drop everything to be with Miles the second he wants her or bury her feelings for him to make him feel more secure. This lack of boundaries is made especially clear when Miles lays out his rules for their arrangement, while Tate can’t produce even one rule.
On the other hand, Miles has to learn that emotional walls are not boundaries and preventing emotional connections only hurts others and himself. Although Miles believes that his walls block the potential of future pain, he is essentially trapping his past trauma within himself. His best friend, Ian, calls him out for this behavior when Miles doesn’t pursue Tate after she says goodbye and moves out: “She’s the first thing to breathe life back into you since the night you drowned in that fucking lake’” (289). Ian’s language is harsh because that’s how Miles needs to hear it. Miles hasn’t built himself a palace of protection from the pains of life but a prison, or as the imagery suggests, a casket.
In response to Ian’s honest attempt to break down Miles’s walls, Miles thinks: “I’ll hurt him. If he doesn’t leave right this second, I’ll fucking hurt him” (289). The subtext of Miles’s thoughts evokes his deeper fear: If Tate doesn’t leave, he’ll hurt her the way he hurt Rachel. Miles feels responsible for the pain of those he loves and internalizes his grief to the point of causing it. Rachel can tell that from the moment she sees him: “He smiles, but it’s not the smile I used to love on Miles. This one is guarded, and I wonder if I did this to him. If I’m responsible for all the sad parts of him. There are so many sad parts of him now” (297). She harbors similar feelings, but unlike Miles, she has let her walls crumble so she can see the world outside of her pain. She helps Miles make this realization, and although it’s not an instant process for him, he takes a huge leap of faith. He returns to Tate and expresses his feelings even though he’s afraid. Miles’s emotional walls come down, and Tate’s relationship boundaries are set. Now that there’s a more equal partnership between them, where neither holds back saying what they feel, they are finally able to be happy together.
Fear and Control as Roadblocks to Love
Fear can be immobilizing or motivating, and people react to fear in different ways. Hoover uses characters’ initial reactions to fear as a way of showing their flaws. She uses their long-term responses to fear to convey the theme that healthy growth comes from stepping outside of one’s comfort zone.
Initially, fear has a stranglehold on both Tate and Miles. Tate is so afraid of losing the only little bit of Miles she gets (their physical connection) that she sacrifices her boundaries and values to be with him. It is not until she faces her fear and moves on (literally, to a new apartment) that she finally gets the love she deserves. While she lets her fear of losing him completely consume her and dictate her actions, she feeds that fear by having that loop reinforced by Miles. The more she resists letting go, the tighter she grips. The more her feelings for Miles deepen, the further Miles pushes her away. Once Tate can see that she’s not getting what she wants or needs from their dynamic, she walks away and prioritizes her own emotional wellbeing.
Likewise, Miles is so afraid of experiencing the kind of pain he did with the loss of Clayton and Rachel that he closes himself off completely. He convinces himself that he can avoid pain by controlling his relationships with others. He walls himself off emotionally from Tate and tries to focus on his in-the-moment, visceral connection with her by only allowing them to have sex. Until he recognizes that his fear controls relationships, he makes himself and Tate suffer greatly. It is not until he confronts his past that he has an epiphany: “I was scared of the fear that comes along with loving someone that much. / Scared of everything bad that could happen. / I was scared that my memories would take away from the day I became a father again” (320). However, despite this fear, Miles pushes onward beyond it. He looks at his daughter and realizes: “I / feel / it. / It’s all there” (321).
Hoover’s message to readers is that there is life beyond fear, and trying to control our relationships will only prevent genuine connections. Growth happens when someone is brave enough to step outside of their comfort zone into a place that may be a little scary, or in Miles’s case, outright petrifying. Hoover doesn’t try to minimize the fear or make it seem like it was a wrong feeling for the characters to have. Rather, she shows through the characters’ arcs that it is okay to be afraid as long as that fear does not stop a person from doing the things they want to do in life.
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By Colleen Hoover
