If the only thing that stays the same is change, the idea that relationships come and go is intrinsic in our journey as connected humans. People grow up and move away, friends drift out of contact, and people break up or divorce.
What makes a good relational ending? How do we foster a compassionate ending of two people deciding they cannot continue a relationship? In the era of ghosting and slow fades, are we doing everything we can to support the emotional health of ourselves and those we have claimed to love?
In this article, relationships can be anything from familial to romantic to platonic to even work-related.
Relationships in my life have felt full of more endings than joyful and calm love. These ends came from abuse, death, drugs, even lies about identity and have ultimately resulted in emotional tailspins regarding my self-worth. I, like so many others, have mainly experienced endings as burning fires of hate and hurt that destroy everything in their path. That, of course, speaks to more of my stories as a child and young adult, and I have spent years adjusting my experiences to foster true and healthy connections and relational endings. I had no models of calm and compassionate endings to base my own expectations of behavior for myself and my partners on.
That is, until I learned about active decoupling, or a choice for two people to intentionally disentangle themselves from a relationship (most commonly a romantic relationship). In Oregon there are triads of people to assist couples in ending a marriage: a therapist, a financial advisor, and a lawyer. These triads work together with the couple to actively support the ending from every angle. A marriage is emotional, legal, AND financial; all parts should be supported in the event of a divorce. This team of five try to get through one of life’s hardest experiences with as little destruction as possible. Which should be the goal, yes?
But what do we owe each other when endings don’t require legal and financial support?
(Note: This advice is not applicable to abusive situations. In relationships of abuse, we owe that person nothing. Get out safely and disappear.)
I think one of the reasons people continue to stay in relationships that have run their course is because they can’t see a way to end that isn’t a vindictive fiery shitshow. Perhaps the relationship isn’t what they want but it isn’t abusive/terrible by society’s standards and thus doesn’t warrant a discompassionate ending. But our choice of experiencing a relationship isn’t binary: continuing in a mediocre relationship or burning everything to the ground. We can choose a third option: ending with the emotional labor of the transition to a state that isn’t the current one. We shouldn’t be afraid of ending because showing compassion to someone else while you are also hurting is hard.
If we get into romantic relationships with intention, should we not exit in the same way? We enter a relationship with hope and vulnerability. If we have shared intimate details and experiences, curling up under the stars and dreaming of exciting futures, our ends should be vulnerable and capable of holding the grief of the relationship ending. That is, if both parties are emotionally intelligent enough to know how to hold others’ pain without disrupting their own sense of self. This kind of boundaried self-compassion is imperative to compassionate endings. (That is also what I would argue to be a cornerstone of good parenting as well: holding the pain and grief of your child while maintaining your sense of self.)
My friends and I have experienced an influx of hurtful behavior from people ending relationships in our lives. In this increased time of endings, we have noticed that there is a certain demographic who are choosing not to engage in the emotional labor of ending with compassion. These people, mainly men in their 30s and 40s, are choosing to walk away in silence, with no indications of something being wrong prior to disappearing. While we can concoct excuses for them, my gut is leaning towards these men being too scared to engage in the emotional labor that all relationships require. This also makes me think it is one of the main causes of the “men’s epidemic of loneliness.” Relationships do take work, and that work extends through the end. We should expect compassionate endings from the people we have in our life, because endings will happen. We should expect hard conversations about what went well in the relationship, what went poorly, taking accountability for our failures (and our successes) as individuals and as a couple, and grieving the loss of what could have been.
You learn a lot about someone in the ending. Are they capable of doing the emotional labor of allowing the other to be heard and loved while knowing the end still coming? Are they able to voice their own emotions without blame? Can they hold true to their sense of self without destroying others? Are they capable of holding their pain in front of them and allowing you to help them with it? Can they hold your pain too?
