Why it’s good to get lost when a relationship ends

6 Feb 2022

We go into relationships hoping that they will last long; and when they fall apart, even if they were as barren as badlands, it can feel as if your heart is going to burst right out of your chest and fall onto the floor in a squelchy mess.

We know the embodiment of heartache – the elevated heartbeat, the acute sense of apprehension in the gut, the inability to focus on anything other than Adele belting out, “I heard that you’re settled down…” We know how it is to oscillate between lying prostrate on the couch, tissues at hand, interspersed with moments of singing along determinedly to I Will Survive.

Some of us know the dread that comes with hauling out our phone, tapping the WhatsApp icon and trying, but failing, to hit out at our traitorous little hand as it types out messages along the lines of, “I miss you, can we please talk?” Or, worse, “Just thought you should know that I’m totally fine without you. Also, I never liked your mother. So glad I don’t have to pretend that she’s not an agent of evil anymore. Anyhow, I’m in SUCH a good place rediscovering my authentic self. xoxo”

Break-ups can be insufferably hard. In the eye of its storm, it can feel as if you’ve stepped into the ascent of the apocalypse, that your skin is slowly but surely peeling off, and that you will never again know what it feels like to laugh. It can sometimes be hard to get out of bed, to find joy in the things that were once a source of pleasure.

On the day that my ex-husband served me with divorce papers, I sat outside on the grass, papers in hand, watching the night sky. I tried to retell our story and figure out the exact moment when the beginning of our demise was set out in celestial cartography. Even though the red flags had been jumping out and waving in my face before we got married, I was still inexplicably shocked and so very sad. Things had got to a point where we could barely look each other in the eye. Where he would come home after I had gone to bed so that we would not have to keep up the pretence of “polite” conversation.

On that night, gazing up at the stars and wondering how I would manage – emotionally, financially, and with being a single parent – I realised that my heart was irrevocably broken. Even though my husband had last had an interesting thought about a decade ago. Even though he could pen a book on all my faults.

Somewhere in between the not knowing, the hurt and the pain lies a life of discovery.

Recently, I read a 2017 essay by Rebecca Solnit titled Open Door. While it’s not about relationships, I found in it the key to letting go of relationships that no longer serve us.

Solnit writes: “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”

The essay is about stepping into the unknown, embracing it, and realising that there are things to be found in its landscape if you’re brave enough to traverse its path. Solnit argues that we never know what is on the other side of the transformation we seek. That, to get to the point of transformation, we need to extend the boundaries of ourselves into unknown territories, we have to be prepared to get lost. In doing so, we have to collaborate with chance and relinquish the need to control. To not get lost is to not live – it is in getting lost that we are brought to a point of destruction and somewhere in between the not knowing, the hurt and the pain lies a life of discovery. In the journey of travelling into the unknown, we acquire moments of arrival, realisation and self-discovery.

Admittedly, this is all easier said than done. Putting on our big-person boots and stepping into the land of the unknown is a frightening thought. Yet, research by Gary Lewandowski et al shows that 33% of those participating in a study on relationship break-ups, really struggled with the aftermath. While the rest of the participants battled too, 26% felt “neutral”, encompassing both negative and positive emotions (such as being sad, but feeling that the break-up was necessary). The vast majority of participants, 41%, ended up feeling that the break-up led to good things that could not have been attained had the relationship continued. Over time, most who struggled with the initial anxiety and hurt caused by the end of a relationship, come to a place of seeing that, in retrospect, it was for the best.

The Lewandowski study found that the conditions under which a relationship ends affect one’s sense of self. Typically, break-ups are associated with significant stress and a range of negative emotions. This distress comes with the terrain of unbinding from a significant other. In the process of unbinding, our identities change – we come to redefine aspects of ourselves and let go of the self that we were within the relationship.

When the winds of change are yelling that it’s over, it is still impossibly hard to know the exact moment at which it should end.

The Lewandowski study also found that for those who largely define their sense of self in terms of their joint identity with their partner, there is significantly more distress when the relationship dissolves. It also found that when the reasons for the dissolution of a relationship pertained to an expansion of self (such as a desire for independence, feeling constrained within the relationship, or not feeling growth within it), then there were significant positive correlations with positive emotional reactions after the break-up.

This is because we enter relationships partly to enhance our sense of self – whether through the accumulation of knowledge, experience, or a sense of identity. This is why relationships begin to fray at the edges when we feel trapped within a certain identity, when we feel that we are not seen and heard for who we are.

So much about our relationships with others is beyond our control – we cannot be the driving force for change in the toxic aspects of another’s behaviour. But we can control how we engage and how we contribute to that toxicity. Imminent loss feels deeply confusing when we’re in the middle of it. It takes a strong internalised sense of self to be comfortable with being alone. Yet being alone and engaging with the velocity of an ending is infinitely better than lingering in co-dependency.

When the winds of change are yelling that it’s over, it is still impossibly hard to know the exact moment at which it should end. Most of us crawl along for a while, waiting for a sign from the universe to drop down from the sky and hit us on the head. When things get to the point of no return, it’s easy to turn a blind eye, to adapt to living in sustained toxicity and constant conflict. It’s easy to make this a new norm. We might argue that this is the right thing to do because we love the other person, but love is not enough.

When the relationship becomes stagnant, stifling, and is taking away from you more than what it gives, when it’s negatively affecting your health and wellbeing, then it’s time to talk about the beginning of the end. In doing so, you may begin to recapture the aspects of yourself that had diminished within the relationship. But first, you need to get lost. DM/ML

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