This morning I found myself thinking about the expression, “failed relationships.” It’s an expression that people use often, generally speaking about marriages or other significant relationships. I was thinking about this as I reflected on my current relationship status as “single” or unattached, about my having two “failed” significant relationships. Like many people, especially overachievers such as members of my family and a number of others I know, failing at anything is generally unacceptable, and failing at something as important as a marriage is exponentially so.
As I began to really unpack the notion of having failed, I realized what a terrible misconception this is. First I want to say how exceedingly grateful I am to have experienced two deeply loving and connected relationships over 30-plus years of my adult life. There are no doubt many folks around the world who perhaps have gone through much or all of their lives without one significant relationship and others who would say they’ve had many. It is not for me to define for anyone else what that means, I can only speak for myself. And as I ponder what the words “failed relationship” mean, I’ve decided that for me it wasn’t that these relationships failed, it is simply that they ended.
It is not lost on me that in each case I wasn’t the one doing the ending and so I experience this differently. I also recognized with a start that in one case I was the one doing the ending. Interesting, isn’t it that at first I acknowledged only the two relationships in which my partners “broke up” with me and completely blanked on the one significant relationship that I ended. Perspective is an amazing thing, isn’t it?
I want to reframe this notion of failure. I was married for about 12 years; my marriage ended officially in 1998, though it was probably over well before that. (I remained in obstinate denial for a long while.) So when my ex-husband told me he was leaving to take a job out of state, telling me he didn’t want me to come with him, I was stunned. The divorce was final a year later. While it was deeply painful and I was a long while recovering from the hurt of it, struggling as a single parent to support two children who were also struggling, I eventually got very clear that ours had not been a “failed relationship.” I need look no further than my son and daughter to know that a failure could not have produced such beautiful beings. One outcome of my having united for a time with my ex-husband is the incarnation on the planet of the two children produced from the union. Another is the growth I experienced in those 12 years. Nothing is wasted; virtually every experience we have–even those that are painful–are opportunities to learn and grow and become a deeper person. I am a better person because of that relationship than I would have been without it and, as I’ve written about before in this blog, I am exceedingly grateful for and value the relationship that I currently enjoy with my ex-husband, whom I consider to be among my closest friends.
I am still recovering from my most recent “failure,” the ending of a seven-year relationship that was fraught with challenges almost from the very beginning. While many of those issues swirled around us and weren’t–at least initially between my partner and me–they nonetheless weighed heavy and differentially on each of us. And while, once again, I should have known it was coming, I was nonetheless unprepared for the ending blow. This was sandwiched in between my father’s death in September of 2010 and losing my job in March of 2011. Yes, it was one of the “series of unfortunate events” that swept down on me in about a six month period. As I think on it now, two years removed from it, I still do not consider it a failure–a deep disappointment, yes. A failure, no. I loved and was loved and it ended. A lot of things “went wrong” that I wish had been different, but were not. I am grateful for all that I learned through those seven years; I grew tremendously during that time, and I am grateful to my ex-partner for that. And while my heart is still a little tender, I remain grateful for all the experiences we had and learning I received from those days.
In his poem, “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote:
I hold it true, whate’er befall;I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
And I think that’s possibly true, at least it has been in my experience. I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey, the old folks say, and that’s right. I’ve had my share of difficulties, though I believe I’ve been more fortunate than some. I am still mostly in one piece without excuse or regret and will continue to chose learning from “failures” rather than lamenting them. While I have the occasional pangs and ouches associated with my most recent loss, I’ve come along way. Holding each relationship with a grateful heart is speeding me toward healing and wholeness and confidence as I continue to walk this path. May it continue to be so!
