The Power of Goodbye
On love, loss, letting go and the damage we sometimes do along the way.
I've been having one of those conversations today that has left me pondering the complexities of human behaviour. Nothing particularly unusual in that, as anyone who knows me will appreciate. My brain has a habit of wandering off down all sorts of rabbit holes, particularly when something challenges my understanding of why we do the things we do.
The conversation was about a particularly acrimonious relationship breakdown. The sort where two people who once loved each other have become embroiled in an increasingly bitter battle of accusations, resentment and retaliation. I'm not going to share the circumstances, because they're not mine to share. Nor am I interested in taking sides. There are always different perspectives, and very few of us are entirely blameless when emotions are running high. But it got me thinking about how relationships end, the extraordinary lengths people sometimes go to in order to hurt one another, and the collateral damage that follows. Particularly when children are caught in the crossfire.
How do two people who once shared a bed, a home, a family, dreams and aspirations reach a point where causing each other pain becomes more important than finding a way forward? And perhaps more importantly, why?
When love turns to war
I've heard so many stories over the years about relationship breakdowns that have descended into what can only be described as warfare. The mudslinging, the threats, the financial battles, the accusations, the withholding of contact, the attempts to undermine someone's reputation or standing in their community. Sometimes it's men behaving appallingly. Sometimes it's women behaving appallingly. And sometimes it's both parties, locked in an exhausting cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation.
Of course, there are circumstances where allegations are entirely justified, where people need protection and where legal or safeguarding intervention is absolutely necessary. I'm certainly not suggesting otherwise. But there are also situations where hurt and anger become weapons, and the desire to punish someone for what they've done overrides any consideration of the wider consequences. And when children are involved, the consequences can be devastating.
I've never understood the mentality of using children as pawns in adult disputes. Whatever has happened between two people, their children haven't chosen any of it. Yet they're often expected to navigate divided loyalties, fractured relationships and the emotional fallout of decisions made by the very people who are supposed to protect them. I try not to wonder how often, in the heat of anger, people stop to consider the long-term implications of their actions. Not just for the person they're trying to hurt, but for everyone connected to them.
The price of being right
When the 17-year relationship with my son's Dad finally broke down in June 2018, I made a conscious decision that quite a few of my friends struggled to understand. I chose not to financially pursue the family home, despite understanding that I may have been entitled to a share of it. Now, that wasn't because I was financially comfortable or because I didn't need somewhere to live. Far from it. But I could see how easily the situation could descend into an ongoing battle over money, property and who was entitled to what. It was hard enough deciding to part ways, but I didn't want the bitter reasons we split up to continue as ongoing resentment or worse, turn into years of antagonism and negativity. We were losing enough already and I wanted to be able to move forward without spending the next chapter of my life fighting over the previous one.
June 2018 - moving house and starting again is overwhelming but necessary.
That was my decision, based on my circumstances at the time. I'm not suggesting for one moment that anyone else should relinquish their financial rights or compromise their security to keep the peace. Sometimes pursuing what you're entitled to is absolutely necessary. But I do think there's a distinction between protecting our interests and becoming so consumed by a battle that we lose sight of what we're actually trying to achieve.
Sometimes being right comes at a far greater cost than we anticipated.
And sometimes winning doesn't feel much like winning at all.
Love and loss
Many years ago, during my ASIST suicide prevention training, I experienced something of an epiphany. I remember working on a page in the workbook about Life Protectors and Promoters. It invited us to consider the people, thoughts, beliefs, behaviours and experiences that help sustain our lives: Who do we admire? Who needs us? What do we treasure? What gives us pleasure? What brings us hope? What gets us through the day?
And then I found myself turning those questions on their heads. What happens when the people we love are no longer there? What happens when the things we treasure are taken away? What happens when the activities that give us pleasure become inaccessible, or the beliefs that sustain us are shattered? What happens when the life we've spent years building suddenly disappears?
It was one of those lightbulb moments that has stayed with me ever since. Because when I think about love and loss, I'm not simply talking about romantic relationships or bereavement. I'm talking about everything that makes us feel good about being alive.
The satisfaction of a job well done. The security of a home. The joy of spending time with family. The pleasure of being intimate with someone. Being healthy and active. Friendships, hobbies, socialising, belonging to a community, having a purpose, feeling valued or needed. Whatever floats your particular boat.
We are, after all, human beings driven by a complex mixture of emotions, experiences and biological reward systems. We seek pleasure, connection, security and meaning in countless different ways. And when those things are threatened or taken away, we experience loss. Not necessarily the kind of loss that comes with a funeral or a sympathy card, but grief nonetheless. And sometimes we lose several of those things at once.
When everything falls apart
Consider what can happen when a long-term relationship ends. Someone might lose their partner, their home, their financial security, their daily routines, their social circle and perhaps regular contact with their children. They may lose their sense of identity, their standing in the community or the future they'd spent years imagining. And all of this might happen within a matter of weeks or months. That's an extraordinary amount of loss for anyone to process. Yet we often reduce the experience to something as simplistic as going through a divorce or break-up. As though it's a single event rather than a potentially catastrophic dismantling of someone's entire existence.
A couple of screenshots from the time during my break up - time is a great healer.
I often think about the high rates of suicide among middle-aged men, and whether we sufficiently understand the social and economic circumstances surrounding their lives.
Suicide is enormously complex, and I would never suggest that relationship breakdown, financial difficulties or any other single experience can explain why someone takes their own life. But I do wonder whether we're sometimes too focused on identifying mental illness and not sufficiently curious about what has happened in someone's life:
What have they lost?
What do they fear losing?
What has happened to their sense of belonging, purpose or hope?
And what happens when those losses begin to accumulate?
Perhaps someone starts drinking more heavily. Perhaps drugs, gambling or compulsive sexual behaviour provide temporary relief from the emotional turmoil. Things that can feel pleasurable in the moment, but which may bring additional problems, shame or regret. And suddenly the very behaviours someone is using to cope with their distress can create further losses. It's not difficult to imagine how someone might begin to feel trapped in circumstances they can no longer see a way out of.
Which brings me to another question: Are our current economic and housing systems actually conducive to healthy relationship breakdowns? When housing is unaffordable, financial commitments are intertwined and maintaining two separate households becomes almost impossible, are we making it unnecessarily difficult for people to leave relationships without devastating consequences? We talk a great deal about supporting healthy relationships. But how much consideration do we give to supporting healthy endings?
The things we do when we're hurting
Something else I've learned over the years, particularly through Psycho-Education courses I've done previously, is that there's a considerable difference between experiencing an emotion and acting upon it, and believe me, that's been a real learning curve! I've spent much of my life navigating some pretty intense emotional responses. I'm certainly not going to sit here pretending I've always handled difficult situations with the wisdom and serenity of the Dalai Lama. Far from it. But one of the most valuable things I've learned is to STOP 🛑, breathe 😮💨 and Think 💭.
Give myself a moment to recognise what I'm feeling before deciding what I'm going to do about it. Because all our emotions are valid. We're allowed to feel angry. We're allowed to feel betrayed, devastated, jealous, frightened or completely bloody furious. We're allowed to feel that life has dealt us an extraordinarily unfair hand, but just because we feel something doesn't mean we have to act upon it, and it certainly doesn't mean that someone else deserves to suffer because we're suffering.
I designed these as handout cards after the PEPS course, quite handy to keep reminding myself of this!
That angry message, that spiteful remark, that attempt to get our own back might bring a fleeting moment of satisfaction. But what happens next? Another angry response. Another accusation. Another act of retaliation. And before long, the original hurt has become almost irrelevant because everyone is so consumed by the ongoing battle.
I've come to realise that emotional maturity isn't about never feeling anger or resentment, it's more about learning that we have choices in how we respond to those feelings. I'm still learning, by the way. I suspect I always will be a work in progress!
What about the children?
For me, this is perhaps the most troubling aspect of contentious relationship breakdowns.
Children don't stop loving one parent because the other parent has stopped loving them, nor should they be expected to. Of course, there are situations where contact with a parent may be unsafe, and protecting children must always take priority. But where both parents are capable of providing loving, safe relationships, surely those relationships deserve to be protected from the hostility between the adults? A child shouldn't have to feel guilty about enjoying time with one parent. They shouldn't have to become a messenger, a confidant, a bargaining chip or an emotional support system for a distressed adult. And they certainly shouldn't have to carry the burden of choosing sides.
What's best for them often ends up best for us in the end I think?
I wonder how many adults look back on their childhoods and remember not the separation itself, but the years of bitterness that followed. The arguments, the accusations, the tension around birthdays and Christmases, the feeling that loving one parent somehow constituted a betrayal of the other. What are we teaching children about love when the end of a relationship becomes an exercise in mutual destruction? And what might we teach them instead if we demonstrated that relationships can end without kindness, respect and compassion disappearing along with them?
Can we continue to care beyond the loss?
This is the question I keep coming back to: what if we became more conscious of the things that give other people's lives meaning? What if, even when a relationship has ended, we could recognise that the other person still needs purpose, security, connection and dignity? What if we could accept that someone who has hurt us is still a human being, with vulnerabilities, fears and feelings of their own? I'm not advocating that people should remain friends with former partners, forgive the unforgivable or maintain contact where doing so would be harmful. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is walk away and establish very firm boundaries. But there is a difference between protecting ourselves and deliberately causing harm. And perhaps there's something profoundly important about learning to recognise that difference, because when we deliberately dismantle the things that give another person meaning, we may be contributing to a level of distress whose consequences we cannot possibly predict.
That doesn't make us responsible for every choice another person makes. Nor does it mean we should remain in unhealthy relationships out of fear of what might happen if we leave. It simply asks us to consider whether our actions are necessary, proportionate and compassionate. Whether we're acting to protect ourselves or to punish someone else, and whether there might be a less destructive way forward.
We all have our beginnings and endings
Our ups and downs, our light and darkness, our love and loss. Birth and death. New relationships and broken ones. Opportunities that open up and chapters that come to an end. Nothing lasts forever, except what lives on in our complex brains. Finding a way to end a difficult situation is never easy but acceptance is key . Perhaps one of the hardest things about being human is that we invest so much of ourselves in the people, places and experiences that give our lives meaning that we sometimes struggle to imagine who we might be without them.
But what if we could learn to accept that something doesn't have to last forever to have been worthwhile? That a relationship can have been meaningful, loving and important even if it ultimately comes to an end? That the ending doesn't have to erase the good that came before it? And that moving forward doesn't require us to destroy what we're leaving behind? I wonder whether we might all benefit from learning a little more about how to say goodbye. Not simply in the context of romantic relationships, but in all those circumstances where life changes and we find ourselves grieving something that once mattered deeply.
Perhaps we could learn to be kinder to ourselves, and to one another, through those transitions. To recognise that the pain of loss is real, but that it doesn't necessarily mean the end of everything good. To understand that our anger deserves to be heard, but doesn't always deserve to be acted upon. And to remember that, particularly where children are involved, the way we end one chapter can have an enormous influence on how someone else experiences the next.
No doubt my (radical?) view is influenced by the many deaths I've experienced in my own family. I've lived with the complexity of grief since I was twelve years old and still learning how to accommodate that pain and loss on a daily basis, some days are better than others, some losses ease, some holes never heal. Because, when someone you love leaves this earth in whichever way it happens, the only thing you can do is to accept it. Any unprocessed anger or arguments or shoulda, woulda, coulda lives on in your mind, where, if you let it, it can fester like cancer and ruin the rest of your mortality.
So, maybe the power of goodbye isn't about finding the strength to walk away. Maybe it's about finding the compassion to let go without destroying each other in the process.
And perhaps, in doing so, we leave a little more room for everyone to find their next beginning.
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