Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?

After breaking up Clementine for some time, Joel runs into her in a bookstore, but she doesn't seem to remember him at all. He find out Clementine has used service provided by Lacuna to erase her memory of him. To get back at her, he decides to erase Clementine from his memory as well. The procedure allows him to take a trip down memory lane, where he remembers how deep he loved her. At that moment, he tries to wake up to avoid his memory being erased, because he still loves her. Most of his memory is erased, and "Montauk" is the only thing that he remembers. On Valentine's Day, Joel decides not to go work as usual but to take a train to Montauk impulsively. Joel runs into Clementine again and they fall in love again.

Funny how it all goes around, they want to forget the past relationship, but they find each other again by chance and fall in love once again. Breakup is a stage of depression for everyone, and every one of us has our own way to cope with the distress. To move on from an old relationship, forgetting your ex is probably the most effective way, but it is easier said than done. Does having your ex erased from the memory mean all your problems are solved?

Lacuna's business model is to make profit by helping erase past relationship from someone's memory. Most of them just want to have peace of mind, but not all of them can get what they want at the end of the day. Mary works at there and she falls in love with the surgeon, Howard. She is shocked to know that she had an affair with Howard before and her memory had been erased before. Having her memory erased does not stop her from loving Howard again. In other words, the memory eradication cannot change the fact that she is attracted to Howard, so it it meaningful to erase the memory?

The memory obliteration is also unethical. Stan is a technician in Lacuna, but he takes advantage of the client. Clementine was his client before, so he knows her things and what she had gone through. Stan enters a relationship with Clementine soon after getting an upper hand in this relationship. However, their relationship doesn't last, when Clementine bumps into Joel on her way to Montauk.

No one knows what a relationship can lead you to. Who knows what comes next, it is likely that you might have makeup right after breakup. Life is full of uncertainties, and it is hard to completely forget someone, especially when you have gone through a relationship with someone. The stuff around you may remind you of your ex from time to time, and it let you wonder what could happen if you were still together. When you just break up with someone, you just feel like no one understands the feeling. However, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. No matter how bad your past relationship was, you surely had some takeaways from them.