A quick preface…
I’ve been struggling to find a way to tie this story together. In part because I don’t want to do a disservice to the lessons and the message, and in part because I’m worried this is not going to be a satisfying “conclusion” to the story.
The truths that have been unearthed over the last few months of deep introspection and healing have been less about my relationship specifically, and more about myself as an individual, and us collectively, and how the prevailing systems that make up our world are fundamentally harmful to everyone and at odds with love and loving. It’s been a reckoning of how childhood trauma, societal conditioning, the patriarchy, past relationships, self-talk, and nervous system overwhelm all play a part of our relationships. And how a lack of tools and education around emotional regulation, communication and conflict management means that most of us are still learning how to - clumsily and imperfectly - navigate our individual needs and feelings as we try and relate to others.
I remember a conversation that Adam and I had earlier this year where I was sharing some of what I was unpacking around identity, femininity and binary norms that had started to feel suffocating. I wondered out loud if he had noticed how he had been impacted by these system as well, and how they ultimately influenced how we relate in our relationship. His response was something to the effect of “can we just keep this other stuff out of our relationship and focus on us?”
It’s a valid question.
Ultimately I think that yes, we can keep the patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, and generational trauma out of our relationships. But only once we’ve understood how these things have influenced us, shaped our realities, and harmed us in the first place.
This is part three of a story. If you haven’t already, go back and read part one and part two.
By the time I decided to end my relationship in December of 2024, I barely recognized myself. I was overwhelmed, depleted and tapped out. I was licking my wounds, trying to piecemeal my life back together, and wondering if I even had the capacity or the desire to keep trying to work on things.
So I did what any overwhelmed millennial does when faced with an emotional crisis: I went to Joshua Tree.
The only way I was going to get the rest I needed was to be alone in middle of the desert.
I landed in California early January, sleep deprived and shaky on the way to pick up my car rental. I cried on the entire drive from Ontario to my Yucca Valley, struggling to make sense of this painful middle ground I found myself in with Adam. Even though I felt emotionally untethered, there was a knowing voice inside of me that kept whispering “you’re on the right path.”
A week of solitude and silence brought a lot of clarity. I was able to see how the grief, fear, anger, and shame that had permeated so much of the last two years had ultimately served as my teachers. They had been my initiation by fire, burning everything that was no longer serving me and inviting me to move beyond restrictive and binary thinking in order to finally see my truth.
This is when I started to question the very framework I was using to think about my relationships, and my life in general.
If I had listened to the podcasts or the Instagram self-helpers (or even my own therapist), I would have decided definitively that my relationship was unsalvageable because we had a “mismatch in our capacities and willingness.”
And for a while, I did believe that. I believed I was not being met with the same level of commitment and sacrifice. That I was not getting the type of open and gentle communication that I deserved. And that my efforts to do “the work” had not been reciprocated. I wasn’t feeling seen, heard, validated, or supported in all of the ways I wanted to be.
I did feel loved - really loved. But I wasn’t convinced that the ways he was loving me mattered if I didn’t also feel emotionally safe and supported.
I kept coming back to these two questions that were supposed to help me decide:
Is this relationship giving to me more than it is taking from me?
Would my life be easier if I wasn’t in this relationship?
I sat outside one evening watching the sky transform from pink to purple, turning over the pros and cons of staying or leaving, and taking an honest inventory of my relationship. I loved this person. I loved the life we had build. I loved who I had become in the 6 years that we had been together. But the communication breakdowns and periods of disconnection and friction felt brutal and had started to eclipse the good. Did that mean it was time to walk away? Was it more bad than good? Was it too hard? What does too hard even mean?
As I wrestled with fitting my relationship into little boxes and trying to decide if being alone was “easier” than staying, things started to unravel for me.
I started to question if these were even the right metrics for measuring the validity and health and purpose of my partnership.
There are so many things in my life that I relate to differently depending on the season I’m in. Or how hydrated I am. Or how much alone time I’ve had. Or how much sleep I’m getting, or exercise, or if I’m sick, or if I’m navigating complex life circumstances. There are plenty of things I do, not to make my life easier necessarily, but because the outcome of the effort enriches my life. Doing things that require collaboration teaches me about patience. Prioritizing someone else’s needs teaches me about devotion and selflessness. Saying yes to something that requires a temporary sacrifice in comfort gives me confidence, and teaches me about resilience. It feels worth the compromise and difficulty.
And relationships? I don’t think the questions we should be asking ourselves in order to assess the deservingness of someone’s place in our lives should be so binary and restrictive.
People aren’t static. Life isn’t static. If we aren’t willing to look at things holistically, historically, long term, with compassion and understanding for how we show up and alchemize with others, we risk pathologizing and flattening them into caricatures instead of whole humans.
I have joked many times that I wish Adam was just a narcissist. It would make any uncertainty I’ve felt about navigating difficulty between us immediately more certain. It would give me something definitive to point to as a reason for things being so hard. It would make him wrong, and me right. It would be an easy picture to paint for others.
But it hasn’t been that at all. Instead it’s been more like a watercolor painting, the lines and colors slowly bleeding together. It’s been messy. And imperfect. And not always as easy to differentiate between what’s his and what’s mine.
Existing in a messy or a murky middle feels intolerable to so many of us because of what it might mean: that we will experience hurt again. Or that someone we are invested in will not be as invested in us. Or that we will be taken advantage of. Or that our love and efforts will not be reciprocated.
Of course it’s important that we collectively empower one another to recognize predatory and harmful behaviors so that we don’t allow a legacy of abuse in our own lives. And it’s also important that we try to understand our own motivations and patterns, needs, capacities, and habits of self-protection, so that we do not inadvertently contribute to the conflict we are trying to avoid. Without that clarity, it can be hard to identify abuse vs conflict, mistakes vs calculations, unwillingness vs apprehension, co-dependency vs inter-dependency.
I had been so laser-focused about what was lacking or not working because I didn’t want to end up in abusive relationships (like my mother), or with someone who always leaves (like my father).
But in the process of assessing and questioning and looking for all of the things that weren’t working for me, I forgot entirely that there was another person involved in this dynamic.
And he was trying very, very hard to show up and love me.
It’s been 5 months since we officially broke up and there has been a fundamental change in the both of us during that time.
We are together, but we didn’t get “back together” because there was nothing to go back to. I killed the old version of me and us in order to create something new entirely.
I no longer feel solely responsible for tending to my relationship. I have learned how to regulate my own nervous system. I have stop trying to manage how Adam navigates his own feelings. I have started questioning my assumptions and leading with curiosity. I have learned how to let discomfort and uncertainty exist in my life. I have started to give him the benefit of the doubt. I am more comfortable in the mess, and because of that, things are ironically a lot less messy. I am learning to trust the moments that feel calm, good, loving, and safe, instead of indulging my fears, being suspicious about how good things feel, and obsessing about when the other shoe will inevitably drop.
I have spent a lot more time with myself - writing, exercising, traveling, in nature, and tending to my future plans. I am getting to know myself better, and accept aspects of myself that I was too scared to acknowledge before, which in turn has helped me navigate everything else better…including how I relate to others.
And as I’ve come to understand and validate my own history and psyche and ways of being, I’ve come to deeply trust my intuition when it comes to the relationships in my life. It doesn’t always mean that things look easy or tidy or amicable. But it does mean that I get to relate more vulnerably and honestly now. And I have a profound and deep reverence for the role that people play in my life. These whole and beautiful people, who continue to point me in the direction of my deepest truth, and who encourage me to release and relinquish any behaviors or thoughts that impede my own expressions of love.
When we allow our relationships to serve and elevate us in this way, and when we trust in our own abilities to discern and self-soothe, it becomes easier to tolerate moments that we feel hurt or misunderstood or dismissed or disappointed. We might feel triggered, but it’s no longer a threat to our sense of safety.
We no longer have to invest our time interrogating the inner workings of others, judging or categorizing or flattening them, guarding ourselves against potential hurt, and trying to know with certainty that they will show up for us in the exact ways that we want them to, and on the exact timeline we prefer.
It becomes easier to see the truth we need to see, to tend to our own hearts, and to be brave in every way:
Either in the staying or in the walking away.
Wow