Relationships are complex things with hundreds or possibly thousands of moving parts. When things break down and relationships end, all parties should take stock of themselves and their part in the demise. For some this self inspection can be difficult and painful. Often when the end comes, the phrase is uttered “It’s not you, it’s me.” Sometimes this may be true but if we want our next relationship to be better than the last, we cannot assume that it is.
From my own experience and watching others at the end of relationships, the tendency for many is to totally discredit the other. “She was a b____!” “He was such an a________.” The problem that I’ve always had with that is, what does that say about me? I just spent 6 months, a year or two years with this person. Now all of the sudden, they are a horrible person. It doesn’t make any sense. At bare minimum, that would mean that I need to fix my selection process but rarely is that it. The only thing that you can control is yourself. So all of the power is in discerning our faults from the faults of the other.
If we assume that we are faultless, then we learn nothing. It is always easiest to point the finger at the other person but it does nothing for us. By looking at our faults, it forces us to do something about them. This is uncomfortable but growth often is. The reason for this failed relationship is to prepare you for the next one and eventually one that you will maintain for life. Like so many other parts of life, it is necessary to “fail forward” in relationships. It may not feel good at the moment but it will get us where we need to go.
When I was young, my Boy Scout troop took a trip to the Statue of Liberty. I’m not sure who talked me into it but a group of us decided to go up to the crown. If you’ve never been there, in order to get up to the crown, you need to take a long spiral staircase. I’ve looked at pictures of the present day stairs and they seem to have improved them. However when I visited, the stairs looked very old and you could see through the steps into “guts” of Lady Liberty. About every fifty feet or so there was a little platform, which I guess was intended for tired people to rest on. For someone who is afraid of heights like me, the climb was bad enough but stopping on that platform was out of the question.
Huryk Unlimited 