Relationships are hard. That statement seems like one of the toughest things to understand and grasp out of all of the rules in the book of life. As humans, we long for community and to be understood and loved by the people within that community. As infants, we long for the affection of our parents and to build strong bonds with them. When we are young, we seek to form relationships for protection, survival, and to grow mentally and physically.
In the next stages of life, we start to understand the meaning of platonic friendship and pursue this newly discovered relationship idea. The concept of growing close to another child or teen who is not a member of your family but shares similar tastes, hobbies, and outlooks on life is invigorating. Friendships are formed and explored and as we age the idea of potential romantic relationships being to grip our attention. Puppy love in our adolescence turns into infatuation and love later on in life. It is easy to become engrossed in the idea of spending the rest of your life with someone and what that might look like.
But what happens when things don't work out, and the simple task of simply speaking to one another starts to feel awkward and foreign?
The natural response is to begin the necessary steps to heal the relationship. To you, all you want is to fix your problems and get back to normal. It's hard to understand why your relationships with your friends and your family members might be going so well, all while the relationship you have formed with your significant other is crumbling. As you try to mend your relationship, the person you are dating might start to pull away, despite the fact that they agreed to cooperate and work to get back to a place when you two are good again.
In this stage, it can be easy to question your behavior and actions throughout the relationship. If you're an empathic person, it is even easier to blame yourself for every negative thing that might have caused the turmoil you're facing with your spouse. But the easy way out of tough situations is often times the hardest on us emotionally. Sometimes you have to make the hard decision to move on by yourself and start a separate healing process. Feelings of guilt might arise when this decision is made, but if it is what is best for you at the time it is always the right decision.
So yes, relationships can be hard at times. One moment you feel like there is no way in the world anything can separate you from the person you love. But in the next breath, you start to forget why you even got together in the first place. Throughout all of these confusing emotions, the main thing to remember is that their lack of effort is not a reflection of your character. At the end of the day, if you know you gave someone your all, you have the right to step away and be your own healing process. Nothing is wrong with you and you aren't any less valuable of a human being if someone chooses to ignore all of the hard work and effort you put into fixing your relationship. Instead, it shows that you are human and that you truly cared about them and what they meant to you. So never allow someone to make you feel bad if you tried and it didn't work out. If you are a good person, you're a good person, and no one can take that away from you - not even a person you once loved.