My internal conflict was never primarily about morals.
It was existential.
I can vividly recall a conversation I had with a dear friend nearly sixteen years ago.
We were sitting on her balcony, just the two of us, talking about relationships. She was engaged at the time, and I was already married.
I remember telling her that I didn’t believe in soulmates. That I didn’t believe there was only one person out there for each of us.
And then I said something that, looking back now, feels incredibly telling.
I told her that if Mike and I ended tomorrow, I’d be fine. That eventually I would meet someone else. Another relationship. Another person “for me.”
Not because I didn’t love him.
And not because our marriage meant nothing to me.
But because even then, some part of me struggled with the idea that love had to equal permanence in order to be real.
My friend nodded alongside me, as if we were both in lockstep in that thinking. And while I didn’t need her affirmation, I think some part of me felt relieved by it.
Like maybe I wasn’t alone in the way I viewed love and relationships.
I think about that conversation often now.
Because the truth is—I already knew something about myself then. I just didn’t know what to do with that knowing.
I didn’t yet understand that the life I was building and the beliefs I held about relationships weren’t entirely aligned.
What I was struggling with had far more to do with permanence, commitment, desire, freedom, and identity than it did with any one specific relationship.
At the time, I didn’t fully have language for that.
I just knew something felt off.
I knew parts of me felt restless.
Disconnected.
Conflicted.
Not necessarily because my marriage was terrible.
But because the structure itself no longer fit as seamlessly as I wanted it to.
And that’s what people struggle to talk honestly about.
We are taught from such a young age that permanence equals success.
Find your person.
Get married.
Stay married.
That’s the goal.
And rarely do we stop long enough to ask ourselves why.
Because so much of our culture hinges on that belief remaining intact.
Religion.
Family structures.
Social expectations.
The entire industry surrounding weddings and marriage itself.
Everything reinforces the idea that lasting forever is the ultimate proof that love was real.
And when relationships end—or evolve beyond the structure they once existed inside of—we often interpret that as failure.
But why?
People evolve constantly throughout their lives.
Our identities shift.
Our desires shift.
Our beliefs shift.
The way we experience intimacy, sexuality, freedom, partnership, even ourselves shifts over time.
Yet marriage is often treated as though two people should remain emotionally, relationally, and sexually static for decades in order for the relationship to be considered successful.
That expectation feels impossible to me now.
That’s the deeper part I keep coming back to.
The ownership embedded inside modern relationships.
Particularly marriage.
Because somewhere along the way, commitment quietly became intertwined with possession.
As though loving someone deeply somehow means we are entitled to permanence from them.
As though entering into marriage means another person’s evolution should somehow stop in order to preserve the relationship.
But human beings don’t stop evolving.
We constantly enter and exit relationships throughout our lives.
Friendships.
Communities.
Versions of ourselves.
Some relationships naturally deepen.
Some drift apart.
Some serve a purpose for a particular season of our lives and then quietly come to an end.
And we accept this reality almost everywhere else.
Except romantically.
When it comes to love and marriage, we are taught that if we meet “the right person,” they should somehow become everything.
Our emotional fulfillment.
Our intellectual fulfillment.
Our sexual fulfillment.
Our stability.
Our excitement.
Our home.
Forever.
And if at any point that shifts, falters, or evolves, we panic.
We interpret it as failure instead of asking whether the expectation itself was ever realistic to begin with.
How could one person possibly contain every version of us for an entire lifetime?
How could resentment, detachment, loneliness, or disengagement not eventually emerge when so many people stop allowing themselves the freedom to evolve honestly inside their relationships?
I also think many people stay because dismantling a marriage often feels more terrifying than remaining inside one that no longer fully fits.
The devil you know.
The life you built.
The identity attached to it.
The comfort.
The routine.
The fear of hurting someone.
The fear of starting over.
The fear of being wrong.
So people stay.
Sometimes long after the relationship itself has quietly shifted underneath them.
That’s part of why divorce carries so much shame.
People say “I’m sorry” when someone gets divorced, as though the ending itself is automatically tragic.
And of course sometimes it is.
But sometimes divorce is also honesty.
Sometimes it is courage.
Sometimes it is two people finally acknowledging what has already been true for a very long time.
Not every ending is a failure.
I’ve always believed people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
And I don’t say that cynically.
I believe we can deeply love people.
Profoundly.
I believe relationships can be real and meaningful and life-changing even if they do not last forever.
But somewhere along the way, we started treating permanence as the ultimate proof that a relationship was successful.
I no longer buy into that.
Sometimes people grow together.
Sometimes they grow apart.
Sometimes a relationship gives us exactly what we needed for a certain chapter of our lives and then quietly reaches its natural conclusion.
Why do we struggle so much to allow that possibility?
Why do we turn endings into failures instead of acknowledgements?
Because there is also beauty in being able to say:
This mattered deeply to me.
This changed me.
I loved you.
And it’s time for us to let each other go.
That doesn’t erase the grief.
Or the longing.
Or the pain that comes with endings.
But not all endings mean something was broken.
Sometimes they simply mean something has reached its end.
-A
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