Do relationships ever really end? I don’t think so. Whether a relationship is good or bad, it leaves remnants that go with us forever. These relationships don’t have to be with husbands, wives, lovers or friends. Think about a teacher that has had a lasting influence. How about a childhood friend who you haven’t seen in years? We are all a sum of all the relationships, both good and bad, that we have had. One of my colleagues used to say that whether you liked it or not sooner or later you would hear your mother’s words coming out of your mouth. She was right and I wonder where my mother and her mother got the words. I think the same thing applies to close friends and to lovers. If it’s not their words, a lot of feelings and attitudes and history have gone into making us who we are.
Sometimes when a relationship ends badly I will hear “thank god he/she is out of my life!” Yet I don’t think they are really gone. I remember once I was seeing a woman for years. She had difficulty from childhood abuse and long-term depression. Her husband was very successful but often wasn’t emotionally there for her. She would often talk about her childhood and the abuse she experienced and the amazing effort she made to overcome it. However she never discussed her first marriage. After a number of years working thru many of her issues I brought this up to her. She told me of her issues with trust. She then stopped and a different look came over her face. She began to talk about how this successful older man had literally swept her off of her feet. She was only 20/21 and he was very wealthy. They married and she began a life of leisure. She would spend all day in the sun, the pool, riding horses. One day they went to the movies and he excused himself to go to the washroom. While there he propositioned a child. She discovered that he had a long history as an abuser. She couldn’t handle that and left him. How did a woman with such a terrible history of abuse end up married to an abuser? Why did it take so long for her to talk about this even though it still has repercussions in her present life and with her current marriage? We are not linear beings but vastly complicated organisms with multiple layers to our reality.
There are countless movies and songs about falling in love and lust. From Sinatra to Elvis to Kanye everyone believes they have something new to describe our hormonal attraction and how wonderful it is. I can’t remember how many adolescents and young adults sat in my office over the years telling me that I didn’t understand or just “didn’t get it”. They were either heart broken about the end of a relationship, or angry with their parents for not understanding that this was really true love and their parents shouldn’t be upset that they had snuck out in the middle of the night. I don’t think any of them believed that their parents or I had ever been young and had gone thru the same hurricane of emotions.
Yes there are a lot of songs about “love”, but right now there is not a lot written about long term relationships. I saw a picture today that made me start thinking about this again. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter were caught kissing each other.
He is 91 and she is 88. They have been married for 69 years and still seem to love each other enough to show simple affection. What is it like to be in a relationship that long? I can’t believe that they never had any disagreements or difficult times. We all do. The image of a river comes into my mind. Sometimes it seems very peaceful and idyllic. Sometimes there are rough and wild patches with rapids and unexpected drops. Sometimes there are floods and sometimes droughts, but the river keeps on until it ends in a larger place. Domeena Renshaw from Loyola used to tell a story about not focusing on the ending so much. She used to say you “missed all the scenery along the way if you do that “. However it’s hard to focus on the scenery with all the distractions and resentments of everyday life. Even the smallest thing can lead to an argument or emotional withdrawal. Right now the buzzword in therapy continues to be mindfulness and practicing focusing on the present. It is hard to do that in a relationship. Romantic love is stressed too much. Commitment is more important. The belief that almost any difficulty can be worked thru if it can be done together is more important. As the river slows down or speeds up or has a stagnant patch, keep believing that if we hold hands, it will move on and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.