When do you know a relationship is over? When do you know that you have given it your all and staying any longer would just damage you and your partner as a person and now it’s time to just move on? How do you know when to give up?I was brought up in a culture where people married for life and under no circumstances a thought of moving on ever occurred to either partner, even if they knew it was pointless and even if they had evidently given up. They stayed together, no matter what. They had families to think about and children and society. Besides in a world defined by self-sacrifice, who ever thought about his or her own self? That was simply unacceptable; in fact it was downright selfish. And even if someone realized the adverseness and futility of their situation, they would not dare walk out for fear of becoming a social outcast and be doomed to a life of loneliness, rejection and virtual isolation. People judged and were judged for the very intimate and personal actions and decisions they made. I have seen and known hordes of people, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, who have nothing in common with their spouses and are not even friends let alone lovers but are sentenced to a life of unwanted, undesired companionship.
On the contrary I now live in a world where people marry for love and love alone. Of course there are few who marry for money but I shall exclude them from this discussion since that can be deemed to be more of a business transaction and not necessarily a marriage. So people here in the west marry for love and love alone, not for society or parents or any of the other reasons, or at least that’s what they claim. Regardless of the reasons behind the union, the option of breaking up is always open. It is acceptable, even normal since 40 – 50% of the unions end in spouses parting their ways; they are not under scrutiny for their actions as much as their eastern counterparts. So in the absence of this societal pressure, it is much easier to be honest and objective about the future of a relationship. There is no do or die involved nothing to keep the couple intact after the departure of love, passion and intimacy. Life is too short right? So why waste it to salvage a deadbeat or even only a trying situation and instead just move on.
To me these are the two extremes and like any other situation between two extremes lays the middle path, which perhaps is probably the most logical and feasible. Are we too quick to judge and give up on something or are we really just trying to drag a dead horse across the finish line? How do we decide which is which and how do we decide it’s time to give up or its time to dig in your heels and fight for the remnants of the original beautiful and promising companionship?
To me the answer lies in finding out, what do I want from myself at this stage in my life? What are my priorities? How is life different from when we had started this journey? How has she/he changed? How have I? Do we still match up or can work to match up? Do we want the same things? How much have we damaged each other? Can we get past the hurt? Are we still a team? Are we even friends? And then asking some of the more obvious questions like can I actually stand this person without him/her creeping me out or without me feeling the need to correct this person or change him/her or can I actually ignore the obvious flaws and can look past them to see what I saw Day 1 or Day 15? What not to see is does this person still electrifies my world, gives me butterflies in the tummy or send tingles down my spine as to me those will always go away. It doesn’t matter if you are married or not, you have kids or not, been with each other 5 months or 5 years, it is never too late to start all over again; if it really does suck, you can actually open the door and walk out. But let’s be honest, if you are really looking for a long-term relationship all these questions will eventually become relevant, almost always and almost always you will have similar issues and problems, so giving up in haste, will that actually make your life better or will it mean that you will go through life wondering and regretting and repeatedly loosing what can be a lifelong companionship? Ask these questions, seek the answers, the solutions, be honest, estimate the damage, expect less, and accept more. And if after all this analysis it still sucks and you just don’t want to deal with this anymore, then you know, it’s time to declare bankruptcy and moving on to the supposedly greener pastures.
