Temporary
I watched my friend dissolve on her best friend’s couch three hours after getting dumped. The snot and the gasping and the fragments—bigger boobs, never loved her, just used her. One of those breakups that hollows you out for a while. The thing that struck me was how completely she treated it like the end of the world, like something fundamental had failed, when really she was just watching a thing that had its time finish having its time.
We do this with everything else. Accept that jobs end. Accept that friendships drift. Accept that every place we live is temporary, every phase of our life is temporary, everything is temporary except we lose our minds about relationships. We act like you’re supposed to lock someone into forever and if they leave or you leave, someone failed at life. The math doesn’t work. People change. Life changes. Nothing stays the same.
I think we inherited a bad idea. Real love means permanent. Anything less is a waste, a mistake you should regret. But that’s backwards. A relationship can be completely real and still have a natural ending. You can be utterly present with someone, utterly absorbed, and still know that eventually the thing runs its course and you both move on. That’s not failure. That’s just life being the way it is.
The thing is, nothing lasts forever anyway. We have to be flexible and adaptable. We follow what pulls at us. So why do we make relationships the exception? Why do we try to force something that’s inherently temporary into forever? We’d be happier if we stopped. If we could be honest about the time we have with someone and just live it completely instead of one eye always on the finish line, wondering if this is the one, if this is it, if you’re doing forever right.
Imagine a world where people actually wanted to be in their relationships instead of feeling trapped by them. Where breakups weren’t apocalypses but just chapters ending cleanly. Where you could love someone with everything you had for a season and then part ways without guilt or recrimination or feeling like you wasted years. That would be a better world.
My friend needs time and probably another tissue. But eventually she’ll realize that Mike leaving her wasn’t a tragedy. It was just the end of something that had a shape and a purpose and now it’s done. And she gets to find the next thing.