The Death of a Relationship

In re-reading my journal recently, I found this old entry that I want to share; maybe it will mean something to you, my readers.

What is it like when a relationship dies?

When love turns to apathy

When passion quietly flickers out?

Can you point to a specific day

or catalog one event that hammers the final nail in the coffin?

 

Maybe sometimes this is the case.

 

But it seems more often the effects

of many days and nights spent alone

of responsibilities and interests that take priority.

The culmination of fights and disagreements over petty things

While the elephant in the room is overlooked.

 

He wants solitude; she wants intimacy.

He wants words of affirmation; she wants quality time.

He focuses on work and career; she focuses on hearth and home.

The kids grow up and leave the nest.

Life doesn’t change for him; it changes radically for her.

 

All those years of runny noses, dirty diapers, squabbles and money woes;

One thing kept her going:  they would one day return to a world of two.

One day the house would be theirs alone once more.

One day there would be time to rediscover what drew them together in the beginning.

One day they would have the time to fall in love all over again.

 

Maybe sometimes this is the case.

 

But not if he wants solitude and she wants intimacy.

She can’t affirm and speak lovingly when her heart is breaking with loneliness.

His focus is still outward looking; but while she surveys the horizons of possibilities and potential, her heart is still anchored to home and hearth—to him.

The kids are gone, making lives for themselves.

She desperately wants life to change for them but he is content with the life he has created for himself.

 

What is it like when a relationship dies?

Death. Solitude. Aloneness. Loneliness. Sadness.

There is no body to lovingly put to rest and memorialize—no closure.

There is no date to mark the end, just an endless maze of days trying to breathe, trying to survive the crushing grief.

And not being able to talk to the one person you want most to talk to:  the one who has been the most significant person in your life; the one you are used to going to with joys and sorrows.

 

How does one move forward while still tethered to deadness?

How does one learn to live as a single while still married?

How does one create a new life when the old one is what you want?

How does one survive emotionally when reminded daily of what has been lost?

I don’t know, do you?