2 Questions You Need to Ask Now Your Relationship Has Failed

What’s the one thing you always see people do after a relationship ends? I don’t know about you, but I always see them blaming their exes for everything that went wrong.

He was jealous and insecure.

She was manipulative and angry.

Everyone has some reason to make whatever happened entirely the ex’s fault, but that’s a recipe for disaster, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s because:

When you place all the blame on your ex, you rob yourself of your power

It’s true. This is a terrible strategy for a few reasons:

Firstly, reflexively blaming your ex robs you of the chance to see where you went wrong and therefore dooms you to repeat those mistakes
Secondly, you’re treating yourself as a victim of circumstance, not a free-thinking agent who can author their own life experience

Do you want to know a mindset you should adopt whenever a relationship fails? I’ll tell you now. It’s basically this:

No matter what happened, it was your fault

I’m serious. I’m all too familiar with the giddy self-righteous thrill that comes from blaming someone else when mishaps happen. I get it completely. It lets you feel superior and allows you to bask in a warm wave of smug and negative emotions. And it also means you don’t have to do a damn thing to fix the problem.

I mean, why would you? It’s all their fault.

But like I just said, it isn’t their fault. It’s yours. This is the mindset you need to make sure this situation never happens again.

And just let me reiterate that I’m 100% serious when I say this. There’s absolutely no scenario anyone can give you that wasn’t your fault, nor should you want one.

Let’s say your ex was abusive. Let’s say they slapped you around for months, gave you multiple black eyes and put you in the hospital.

It was still your fault.

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You could have spotted the early red flags in the courting process. You could have left the moment they first put their hands on you. You could have called the police. You could have taken self-defence classes.

You could have previously worked on your self-esteem and gotten yourself to the point where you had such a healthy degree of self-worth that you bounced from the relationship the moment they got violent.

But you didn’t do any of that, did you?

So what good does it do you to walk around blaming the other person? You get to revel in a sea of self-righteous indignation, but it doesn’t help to put you in a position not to have this happen again.

So what do you want? Do you want to be right? Or do you not want to ever be in an abusive relationship again? Do you want to be able to proudly proclaim to all who’ll listen about the lousy hand life dealt you? Or do you want a better hand?

If you want to whine, bitch, and be a victim, enjoy that with my sincere compliments and bon voyage. If, however, you wish not to have this situation happen again, here are two questions you need to ask yourself about your failed relationship.

You ready?

Here come the pain!

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Question 1: What did I do to cause this?

Yeah. This is the first question you need to ask, and you’ll find it’s a compelling one too. Let’s say your partner was abusive. You caused it by putting up with their crap and slowly programming them to think treating you that way was acceptable.

Let’s say they cheated on you (as happened to me). Maybe you spent too much time working and not enough with them. Maybe you refused to do what they wanted in the bedroom. Maybe you just picked the wrong partner. Maybe you got with someone who, deep down, you knew would do something like this because of your own subconscious patterns of self sabotage.

Let’s say you guys had nothing in common, and being with them was an absolute bore towards the end. Well you’re the one who chose such an incompatible partner, so ask yourself why that happened. Why didn’t you choose someone better? Also, did you try to engage with any of their interests and bridge the gap? Or did you not give a shit?

Did you do anything to find common ground?

Were you actually the aggressor in your relationship? Did you subtly abuse them? Were you jealous and insecure? Did you start arguments you didn’t have to? Did you expect your partner to complete your unfulfilled cup of self-worth and hate them for not being able to do something you can’t do yourself?

What did you do?

Ask yourself that question until you come up with answers. And when you do, take that knowledge into your next relationship.

To give you an example from my life, I was once in a long distance relationship with a selfish woman who refused to visit me. It was always me going to see her. In the years we were together, the ratio of visits was about 15 to one in my favour, But you know what? It was my fault.

I could have put my foot down and refused to see her until she came to see me. I could have left and met someone else. But I did neither of those things so I had to take the burden of responsibility for what happened.

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Question 2: What red flags did I miss?

Yeah. What signs could you have seen? We always talk about red flags nowadays, and while that phrase gets beaten to death, it ultimately has a good message because people leave clues of their true identities even when trying to mask them.

One of my closest friends (pictured with me below) was in a relationship with a man who objectively can be called nothing less than an abusive dickhead. A parasite who abused her emotionally and made her feel worthless. A wanker who sabotaged her career and left her penniless. A cunt who put his hands on her and who she had to get a police restraining order on.

I’m proud to say I helped her escape that situation, but that’s not the point. The point is that once she realised she was to blame for what happened, she was able to move on and ensure it would never happen again.

She educated herself about the behaviours this prick exhibited and realised there were patterns. Apparently, in the beginning, he did something abusers commonly do called love bombing to make her fall for him.

This was where he showered her with endless praise to make her feel like the only woman in the world and ensure she’d never have eyes for anyone else. He got her to a point where she was so deeply and madly in love with him that she lost all sense of rational thought.

That was phase one.

Once that was done, he switched to phase two, I.E., dark manipulation to strip her confidence and make her feel like she was nothing without him. He systematically played to her fears and insecurities. He robbed her of self-worth and had her constantly walking on eggshells, terrified she’d offend him and thinking she’d never be able to find anyone else if he left.

Consciously or unconsciously, he followed a systematic process to take away my friend’s agency and dignity and once she knew that, she knew what to spot in her future relationships.

So my question is:

What early clues were there in your relationship?
What early clues were there that the thing that eventually happened was going to happen?
What didn’t you see that, if you did, would have saved you weeks, months, years, and maybe even decades of misery?
Where did you look the other way when you shouldn’t have?
What red flags did you miss?
Where did you fuck up?

And with that, I conclude this post. Goodbye. Ciao for now. Bon voyage.

Excelsior.

Ciaran

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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