Letting relationships go
Image: Jocelyn Hsu
Too good to leave, too bad to stay
Breakups suck. There’s no getting around it. They often bring out the worst in us...but they don’t have to.
One thing people often struggle with is when to keep trying at a relationship that’s almost but not quite working, and when to let it go. Letting go is hard. It hurts and it sucks and there is always that little voice in the back of your mind whispering that if you stop trying, the relationship has failed.
I can understand what it feels like to keep trying and trying to make things work with someone you really love, and not quite being able to make a go of it. Often, in poly circles, people talk about the relationships that work, but seem reluctant to discuss the relationships that end. I’d like to talk about one of my relationships that ended.
My ex-wife and I were together for 18 years. She identified as monogamous, though she had numerous other long-term boyfriends throughout our marriage. Our relationship was polyamorous, and for that entire 18 years, there was a lot of heartache on both sides. She never understood why I’m poly—our relationship started out in what would today be called a “polyamorous quad” with my best friend and his girlfriend, though back then we didn’t have that language—and she strongly preferred casual outside sex over outside heartfelt relationships. She could never really make herself be welcoming and accepting of my other partners, however hard she tried.
In the end, all the work we put into the relationship could never be enough.
I understand why, when you love someone, you want to keep trying and trying if you see even the tiniest glimmer of hope, no matter how incompatible you might be. Here’s the thing I learned, though. At the end of the day, there are some folks who simply are not good relationship partners, and all the love and all the effort in the world can’t change that.
Sometimes, the kindest, most compassionate thing you can do is to say, “Look, we just aren’t good partners for one another. Let’s not try to be partners, and instead see if we can build a friendship that honors the connection that we share but that also lets each one of us pursue our own happiness.”
This is one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever been faced with: it is possible for two genuinely good people who genuinely love each other to be so incompatible that nothing can overcome it; there is simply no way to build a relationship that makes both people happy. There is no shame in letting go of a relationship that does not make the people involved happy.
If a relationship is a constant source of pain and trauma, something is wrong. A good relationship lifts the people in it up and fills them with joy, not pain. When we become determined to hang onto a relationship at any cost, no matter how painful it becomes, it can get very easy to lose sight of that.
Breaking Up with Grace
What do you do when it’s time to call it quits? The easiest thing is to give in to your worst impulses, the lesser demons of your nature.
Breaking up hurts. When we’re hurt, we tend to want to lash out, to hurt back, to make the other person feel what we’re feeling. We tend to get angry. We tend to shy away from our own hand in the unrolling of events, to see ourselves as “more sinn’d against than sinning.” This is all normal, and acting out on these impulses feels wonderful, but at the end of the day, there’s one overriding factor I have found that can really help shed light on the right thing to do:
Do the choices I am making make my life better or worse?
Image: PH romano
There’s a saying: Hanging on to anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It’s normal to feel angry, hurt, resentful after a breakup—but as with jealousy, what you feel and what you do are two different things. Your emotions are the advisor whispering into the monarch’s ear, but you’re still the one in charge.
So: What does that mean? It means deliberately reaching for the better angel of your nature, even when you’re hurt. It means recognizing that breakups are complex, and it’s rare indeed that anyone is purely sinner or purely saint. It means understanding that even if you are completely sinless, and the other person truly is a monster, battle not with monsters lest you become one yourself. And, honestly, it means, do you want to define your life going forward in terms of someone who hurt you? Sometimes the best revenge is simply being happy and building a vibrant, joyous life of your own.
I get this is hard, really I do. I’ve survived toxic, abusive relationships myself, relationships that have left me reeling, blaming myself, wondering how I missed all the signs.
But at the end of the day, I don’t want to drink poison and hope the person who wronged me will die. I don’t want to set myself on fire to try to burn someone else.
In practical terms:
- Be kind. This above all is a good guide to living a better life.
- Resist the impulse to gossip. This might win you some allies in the short term, maybe, but it also reflects on you. It also divides your community, which is a bit like peeing in the same pool you’re swimming in.
- Feel what you feel...but remember that feelings are not (necessarily) fact.
- Enforce your boundaries, without fear, shame, or blame. If you don’t want to talk to the other person, that’s fine. Say so calmly and directly, and then don’t talk to them.
- Rein in the Drama Llama. Decide what you want your life to look like moving forward, then build a new life for yourself, without fixing on your ex.
- Understand that sometimes, people simply aren’t a good fit for each other. That doesn’t make either of you a monster.
- If you need to, take time off dating other people for a while. Filling the hole in your heart by plugging in whatever warm body wanders by isn’t fair to them...or to you.
- Self-care. Take some time to re-connect with yourself, with what brings you joy, with what helps you find happiness.
Special Considerations for Poly Breakups
Poly breakups can be a little more difficult than monogamous breakups. For starters, the poly world is small and highly incestuous, so it’s likely that your ex will be part of the same social circles you are after a breakup, and that prospective new partners may be connected to your ex.
You may even find yourself in a situation where people you’re romantically connected to, are connected to your ex. This can be especially tricky to navigate.
Some people try to manage this by presenting themselves as a ‘package deal:’ if you date one of them, you must also date the other, and breaking up with one means losing the relationship with both. While I can understand this, I would encourage you to think carefully about dating couples with this policy; I have found it’s questionable at best and downright abusive and coercive at worst. Yes, on the one hand, we are all free to end a relationship at any time for any reason, including because of another breakup—healthy relationships are voluntary, not prisons. On the other, controlling another person’s social connections is one of the defining elements of abuse. If someone says “Sue broke up with me, so I need you to break up with Sue,” that is toxic, perhaps abusive.
This is, I believe, one of those polyamory problems for which there are not yet any good solutions.