Why Some Relationships Don't Last

Introduction

The inspiration for this Hub was found in an online discussion about what makes relationships last. For the most part (and in my opinion), most of the thoughts (if not all) offered by the different people in that discussion were perfectly reasonable, valid, opinions/thoughts on the subject. My own reaction to all those generally, perfectly reasonable, opinion/thoughts was, however, that so many people (and not even necessarily the people in that discussion, but in general) seem to see the matter of lasting or failed relationships as a much simpler thing than it sometimes is.

One individual's post (s/he called it his/her "two cents") seemed, to me, to best sum up the subject in a "bottom-line" kind of way. Even so, the post still seemed to me over-simplfy things more than they should be (at least in some cases).

To paraphrase the post, the individual's response in the discussion was that relationships last when both people are devoted to making it last; and when inevitable storms hit the relationship/marriage and that people need to be willing to put in the time and energy it takes for them to get through the occasional storm. She added that the storms "WILL" inevitably come to each relationship and will test it; and that if people are willing to get through the storms by holding onto to one another, rather than reaching out to someone or something else, the relationship will last.

Without disagreeing with the basic idea of this particular take on the subject of relationships lasting or failing, the following is my reaction, and my attempt to both expound on and clarify those basic ideas that are sound, but that still (at least in my opinion and from what I've seen) over-simply the matter of lasting-versus-failed relationships/marriages.

Because of the length of the post that would have resulted from my take on this particular subject, I decided to write my own response in the form of a Hub. That response follows here:

Of Relationships and Storms

I don't disagree with what you said, but I think it's not as simple as that either. Sometimes those storm winds and waters are so much and/or come so often, trying to hold on to one another is futile; because the partners get pulled in different directions, based on fundamental differences in ways they cope with the bigger storms (with those fundamental differences being things within each person's nature that, had all those storms not come ripping through, would never have been revealed at all). It's not that they're not willing to keep trying to hold on together, and it's not that they don't. It can get so, no matter how hard they try, those storms are so bad that both people go into into a "mental/emotional survival mode", and going into that mode amounts to pulling inward and doing what it takes to try to survive. Amidst the dark skies, pounding rains, and flying debris; people can know what they want to do and are trying to do, but can't see the kinds of things that are happen to them, as a couple.

When the storms pass, people come out their "emotional bunkers", which are stocked with whatever they've needed to survive - only to discover they've moved that much closer away from the other. I think, if no more big storms come too soon after the previous one, the couple can take stock, figure it out, and recover as a couple. If too many big storms come too close together, I think each partner stays in that "bunker" longer and longer. When all the storms eventually died down, the two people climb out of the bunkers; only to discover that while they were in there, they've grown/changed/been scarred individually and don't really know who that other person is any more.

Storms are like these tornadoes that just tore through my state this week: They can come close enough to believe they could be a threat to everyone, but they don't always hit everyone; and they don't always come through and hit some of the same people more than once. They come with different levels of strength, and sometimes (a lot of cases) such severe storms will tear down buildings and trees that have stood through all kinds of storms for hundreds of years.

So often, when something like divorce happens, it really is a matter of people not knowing/wanting how to head it off. In other cases, though, it really can be a matter of time, place, and luck. A lot of people don't want to believe that divorce can also be a matter of time, place, and luck because that's every bit as scary as knowing how time, place, and luck factor into something like those tornadoes.

After such storms, people can rebuild, but they can never put things all back the way they used to be, and never again be quite the same people and couple they were before it all happened.

As with those tornadoes that caused so much damage in my state this week, but that I was fortunate enough/luck enough not to have been hit by, the kind of thing I've described is something that can require having gone through that kind of thing to really see how it can all happen to couples nobody would ever imagine it could happen to.

When life beyond my own home and marriage hit that marriage with too many of those big storms, I awoke one day to find myself feeling very much Dorothy (in MGM's version of The Wizard of Oz), after she'd landed somewhere she never would have imagined and found herself in a place where beings who looked like "everyday human beings" (rather than the different-looking Munchkins, talking animals, flying monkeys, or inanimate objects that had come to life) were apparently assumed to be witches of either the good or bad variety.

Through not fault of her own (or anyone else), Dorothy found herself in the strange land where she was being asked, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" See, the thing is, in Kansas or any other number of similar places in the real world, when it comes to divorce people have a tendency to assume that one or both parties had to be a bad witch, even if he didn't intend to be. The idea seems to be that the relationships that last must be made up only of two good witches.

Finding myself in that "Post-Divorce Oz", I so often found myself being asked which one or two of us had been "the bad witch", or else I discovered that I was in a world where people just automatically assumed that one or both of us was that bad witch. In my own "Dorothy Experience" I also found myself (and my ex-husband) being blamed for things for which neither of us could have been or should have been blamed.

Dorothy got to click her heels three times and find herself at home. I didn't. I've been living in "Post-Divorce Oz" since I first landed here, and I'm still running into people who think that things like relationships that don't last are always about something as simple categorizing people as "good witches" or "bad witches".

In the MGM movie, Dorothy's real life was seen by viewers in black and white. When she landed in Oz the movie changed to color. The reverse has been my experience in real life. Before I landed in "Post-Divorce Oz", people who viewed my life saw it in all the colors that were there. In "Post-Divorce Oz", so often when someone views my life (or the life of other divorced people), they see it in black and white, no many how many colors are still there, as they are in so many other lives.

The thing is, when something really unusual happens, like a whole house landing in your world and a strange-looking girl shows up among the population of Munchkins, witches, and whoever else inhabits your world everyone who lives in a land like Oz pretty much sees that something very bizarre has occurred.

When someone in a situation like mine lands in "Post-Divorce Oz", the problem generally is that he looks like everyone else around, and he's in a land where so many other people don't realize that he is every bit the stranger that Dorothy was in Oz; and that, like Dorothy, he's dealing with good witches and Munchkins who either eye him with suspicious or see him as something other than who/what he really is, or else fending off bad witches who blame him for things he didn't do (or at least wouldn't have done, had he had any control of the matter).

For the most part, it doesn't matter much to me, personally, who views my life in color and who views it in black and white. Here in my own version of Oz, I do often feel like that stranger who landed in a place where nobody knows where she came from; and here in reality, no matter what beautiful colors ever make up the picture of my whole life, I know there will never be any clicking of heels and waking up to a pre-tornado home and the discovery that it was all a dream.

Because of that, all I can do is try to tell people how some other people find themselves in this particular world in the hopes of reconciling what remains either mystery or matter for debate for some, and reality for a whole lot of others.