Many years ago, my stepmother came to visit us on the farm. I was infuriated with my husband. I was frustrated and had no idea what to do. Should I leave him? Is now the time? What do I do?
She looked at me with that look that wise women get and said, “Oh darling. If he is still upsetting you, then things aren’t over yet. There will come a day when nothing he does will upset you or make you happy. That is the day that your relationship is over.”
(This is not about staying in abusive relationships. If we are in a relationship with a narcissist or abuser, then we must go. But in all other situations, her advice is very valuable.)
For me, it was many years later that something changed. I asked him something and he responded in a way that threw me totally off guard. Previously, I would have been in tears. I would have been so disappointed and upset. But this time was totally different.
I felt nothing.
In that moment, I realized that our relationship was over. We had had twenty years of owning businesses together, raising children, illness, happiness, struggle and all kinds of great times too.
But in that moment, I felt nothing.
He looked at me and asked if I was mad at him.
I said, “No. I’m not mad at all. I’ve just realized that our marriage is over. We have truly taken two different paths and I think that if we were to continue going forward, we would be asking each other to be something that we simply aren’t.”
What If We Leave Before That Moment?
If things are still bothering us in our relationship, then it’s important to look at what they are. What are the patterns repeating over and over again? It’s really valuable to recognize them now or else we will very likely unconsciously repeat them going forward — regardless of who we are with.
The great thing about the relationship that you’re in right now is that you have all kinds of history together. You have been playing out these patterns for years. The patterns were woven by your own family history, the society you live in and all of your own personal quirks and dreams.
The key understanding is that both of you have been playing a game. You each have taken roles and are unconsciously or consciously playing them out.
For this reason, I don’t blame my ex-husband for anything that happened in our marriage. We both played. He couldn’t have played the role he played unless I had played the perfect complimentary role.
Perhaps we learned these roles from our parents and grandparents and that it was because they were complimentary that we were drawn together in the first place. This is why we barely recognized the dramas that were going on. We’d grown up with them. Even if we didn’t like them, we thought they were actually normal.
So, if we jump out too soon, what will stop us from continuing the drama in our next relationship? Wouldn’t it be better for both of us to look deeply into what is playing out right now? To actually make different choices? To communicate in different ways to change the normal trajectory of the experience that we have repeated over and over again.
It’s possible that through new communication and different choices, you may find your way back to each other. And if you don’t, then at least both of you will have had some real practice acting differently in relationships and hopefully gained insights into why we fall into these patterns.
There’s a much better chance that both of you can move onto other relationships with a little more of a blank slate.
How Do We Go Forward?
Kindness, faith, and courage.
Kindness keeps us emotionally connected to both ourselves and our partner. It is what helps us to see clearly because we aren’t caught in blaming or needing to be right. When we can truly see that each of us has a chance to learn deep lessons from this, we are a little gentler with each other. We recognize our own pain that has led us to our part in it… and we see the struggle in our partner. Without kindness, we will do and say things that push each other away, creating even bigger walls and nothing will be learned or resolved.
We need to have faith in what we feel inside — the faith that we are doing the right thing for everyone. Sometimes, the fears of the outside world — needing security, companionship, and being connected to someone — are so loud that they will take us off of our path. It is listening within and believing what we feel inside that truly helps us find a gentle way through.
This takes courage. It takes courage to be kind to someone when you are seething mad. It takes courage to take a deep breath and find the words that heal instead of hurt. It takes courage to follow your intuition that this isn’t right anymore when your partner doesn’t understand.
It is the point of courage that makes all the difference. That is what changes a relationship so that we want to stay. It is what gives us strength to look at ourselves deeply and truly change old patterns. It is what tells us that we will be OK one way or another.
And then, when that moment comes and you realize that your journey with this person is over, you can amicably leave, start a new journey… and maybe even remain friends.
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Previously published on medium
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