How Relationships Die
Out of all the people we have ever met in life, how many are we still talking to? Out of all the people we befriended, how many are still close to us? The ratio is depressingly low. It’s close to one percent, and even less for some. If the number is higher than five percent, you are either lucky or exceptionally good at maintaining relationships.
The death of relationships is more common than we think, yet we dread the idea of being separated from people. This is the one thing we are remarkably good at. Statistics suggest it is inevitable. But when we think about separation, we imagine it will come as a shock to us. Most relationships die a natural death. There is no trigger, no dispute, no one big, catastrophic quarrel that destroys everything.
Almost all relationships die once the context they were built upon disappears. A relationship that began in a shared office, on a university campus, or through a shared struggle struggles to survive once that context or environment disappears. After that, the relationship has to transform in a way that allows it to survive in a new context. Almost all relationships fail here.
Because transformation is not easy. There is initial discomfort, so the need has to be strong enough to overcome it. And people are too predictable in that department: without the need, they see no incentive to take any action, and so the relationship slowly fizzles away. The incentives that kept the relationship strong cease to exist without the context, and without incentives, nothing survives.
You can do nothing but brace yourself for the days when you will no longer be close to the people you are close to today. You think you have the strongest of connections, but you don’t. What you have is a shared context, an incentive, and a need for each other within that environment. Without the environment, there is no need, and without the need, there is no relationship.
It sounds nihilistic, but it’s actually very realistic. Once you understand what drives the relationship, what the glue is that keeps you together, and what needs to disappear for the current spark to wither away, you can see the end more clearly. You can choose to focus more on the present and feel less hurt when that dreaded time comes.
The good thing is, you don’t realise when it happens. It’s gradual, and before the full force hits you, you subconsciously start preparing yourself for it. I have gotten so good at studying this phenomenon that, just by looking at the dynamics of a relationship, I can tell how it will eventually end or wither away.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t shield me from the pain. It only prepares me for it in advance.