Reflections on love, loss, and letting go to enable growth, inspired by 'April, Come She Will'

Sometimes music captures the truth of relationships in ways no textbook ever could. For me, one of those songs is Simon & Garfunkel’s April, Come She Will (1966). Barely ninety seconds long, it somehow holds the entire cycle of a relationship, the rush of new love, the steadiness of closeness, the shifts of change, the sadness of endings, and unspoken promise of renewal.

As a therapist, I often find that songs like this offer a language for feelings that clients struggle to name in their relationships. And recently, after a training course on Buddhism, I was struck by how closely this brief folk song lines up with both psychodynamic theory on relationship issues, and Buddhist teachings on impermanence and clinging.

Seasons of Love

Each verse of April, Come She Will mirrors stages that many couples bring into therapy:

• April, come she will. When streams are ripe and swelled with rain.

Love bursts into life, full of promise, intoxicating, and idealised. Couples talk about how they met, "suddenly there she was," and like a swollen stream this intoxication washes away all beneath it, promising perfection and everlasting stability.

• May, she will stay. Resting in my arms again.

Warmth and stability settle in. This feels safe and offers a platform for big decisions, "we just knew immediately." Commitments are made, bathed in May's sunshine, and few couples consider what unconsciously brought them together.

• June, she’ll change her tune. In restless walks she'll prowl the night.

Restlessness appears. With life events changing the balance, one partner may feel distant, the other confused or hurt “They’ve changed so much”, "I don't understand him at all anymore"

• July, she will fly. And give no warning to her flight

Suddenly change feels more like rupture: affairs, withdrawal, or the threat of leaving. Childhood emotional wounds and unconscious responses can get triggered, diminishing communication. "I'm absolutely lost, please speak to me”, “Please, I just need some space."

• August, die she must. The autumn winds blow chilly and cold

By now, the relationship, or at least the old version of it, feels lost or blown away. This is the moment of truth in the therapy room, are they able to write the next chapter together? Part of that decision will be how much they have understood from the therapy. "I had no idea that you experienced that as a child", "It explains a lot about you now."

• September, I’ll remember. A love once new has now grown old

What’s left is a longed-for memory, replaced with a disillusioned love. Ideally, this becomes a gentle holding of what was, rather than a trap of regret or blame. In therapy, there is hope of insight and change to enable transition rather than a cold confused ending.

When relationship stages do end, our work is focussed on finding meaning in what happened and important learnings about self and others for the future. And it’s about helping renew and regather for the next phase, integrating experiences from earlier phases to create a richness.

Therapy, Buddhism, and letting go of relationship phases to allow growth

In psychotherapy, this arc looks like the shift from idealisation to disillusionment, through loss and mourning, and finally to integration. It’s the psyche’s way of making sense of love’s rise and fall.

From a Buddhist perspective, the song points to the ‘noble truth’ of impermanence (anicca). Everything arises and passes away. Believing that our suffering comes not from change itself, but from clinging to what we wish would last forever.

In the counselling room, these two perspectives come together in a powerful way. Couples often believe they’ve “failed” when their relationship doesn’t feel like it did in the early days. But naming these stages and recognising them as part of the natural rhythm of love, can bring huge relief. Instead of trying to force the relationship back to “April,” they begin to discover how to meet each other in the season they’re actually in, with the people they've become and within the life stage they are at.  This insight can transform and renew.

Finding Peace in the Seasons

For me, April Come She Will is more than a song. It’s a gentle, beautiful reminder that relationships, like the seasons, are always moving. There are blossoms and storms, warmth and chill, beginnings and endings.  And new beginnings, with luck, accompanied by insight and growth.

Psychotherapy helps us understand how we each cling to others in our own idiosyncratic way. Buddhism reminds us that it’s the clinging itself that brings suffering. Together, they invite us to honour love, to let it grow and shift.

And perhaps that’s where healing begins, remembering with tenderness, living what is with greater awareness, and loosening our grip on the phase that must end.

Relationship counselling can be a space to explore these patterns with compassion and curiosity, and to find new ways of relating that bring more ease and connection in whatever seasons we find ourselves in.