All Relationships End

I've been listening to Michael Meade talk about wholeness — specifically, how we access it through the process of creation. His idea is that in making something, whether a painting, a poem, or a piece of pottery, we bring something incomplete into wholeness. That act of creation is itself how we touch the deepest parts of ourselves.

But then he added, almost as an aside, that we also create whole relationships — and then they fall apart. Unlike the painting or the poem, the relationship doesn't stay whole. It ends. And then, if we're lucky or brave or both, we begin again.

That offhand observation opened something up for me. Most relationships end before death does the work — and even the ones that don't, the ones that seem to last a lifetime, are really a series of separate relationships between the same two people.

The question is, how do we deal the fact that all relationships end? And how do we build relationships that are structured, from the very beginning, to allow for transformation rather than collapse?

When we first enter a relationship, most of us are afraid. We manifest that fear differently depending on our attachment styles, our histories, our trauma — but underneath the differences, I think the fear is often the same: of not being loved enough, of loving more than we are loved, and of losing the relationship entirely.

The painful complexity is that, as we dive into the development of a relationship, we have to also hold the recognition that we are going to lose it. That will happen. The thing so many of us dread when we develop real feelings for someone will actually happen.

So the question becomes: can we begin a relationship already knowing that, and set in place the conditions to allow it to transform when it needs to transform?

If we can, then a lot of the usual questions stop being relevant. Is this the perfect person? Do they check all the boxes? Those questions dissolve. The more honest question becomes: is this someone who has the same capacity I have — to communicate, to hold on loosely, to remain present, to allow — in a way that lets transformation happen over time?

Why does transformation keep happening? Most obviously, we need different things at different points in our lives. Our souls are on different trajectories. Within each of us, there are at least two distinct sets of self moving simultaneously: what we might call the child self — the ego, the wounded parts, the places still working through old pain — and the adult or higher self, the oldest soul parts, the aspects of us that are still coming into being and reaching toward actualization.

There is something a little false about drawing a hard line between those two. But there is also something useful about the distinction, because it helps explain why our needs can seem so enormous and so contradictory. Sometimes it is the child parts that are shifting — moving through suffering, seeking stability. Sometimes it is the higher self that is changing, expanding, reaching further into the world.

It can feel, at times, like at least two whole people living inside one being. Now multiply that by two. Each person in a partnership is holding all of that — two vast interior categories of self, each changing at its own pace, sometimes day to day, sometimes year to year. The relationship has to hold all of it. And so it requires a flexibility, an allowance, a kind of sustained space-holding that is extraordinary to maintain. That is why it is so hard.

The how of sustaining a relationship through all of that seems to come down to something like supreme flexibility — but flexibility alone is not enough. There has to be a tether: some constant that remains even as everything else shifts. I think that tether is made of a few specific things: an overall commitment, an agreement to time spent together, and an agreement to ongoing communication.

Those structures need to be held as freely as possible — as loosely as the relationship can bear — while still being held. That set of agreements is actually the fragile thing. It is what needs to be tended over time. The goal is to be as liberated as possible without letting go entirely.

And that, I think, is the hardest part, because liberation creates a certain lack of safety. And each person's child self — the more tender, more wounded interior — is then trying to handle the extent of that freedom, trying to allow it, learning to trust it.

Distilled: The Ideas

On building a relationship that can transform from the beginning:

• Enter the relationship with honest acknowledgment that it will end or fundamentally change — and let that be a premise, not a fear

• Ask not "is this the perfect person?" but "is this someone with the capacity to communicate, allow, and stay present through transformation?"

• Establish from the start the structures that make transformation possible: a shared commitment, an agreement to time spent together, and an ongoing agreement to communication

• Hold those structures as loosely as possible while still holding them — the goal is maximum liberation within a maintained tether

On keeping a relationship going through change:

• Recognize that a long relationship is really a series of relationships between the same two people — each ending and beginning is not a failure but the nature of it

• Understand that each person contains at least two enormous interior categories of self (the child/wounded self and the higher/oldest self), each changing at its own pace and needing different things

• Show up for the other person's child self — the part moving through suffering — so that their higher self has the stability to keep developing

• Practice sustained flexibility and space-holding, knowing that your partner's needs may shift day to day or year to year

• Tend the commitment itself over time — it is the most fragile part, and the most essential