Being in the flow

Relationships have their own rhythms of expansion and contraction, ebb and flow, growth and regression. Life happens. The individuals in the relationship shift and change. It is natural for a relationship to have its intense times followed by more quiet times, times of great closeness and times of great distance. When we are able to move with the flow of these rhythms, we can find ourselves having very rich and fulfilling relationships that allow for the individuals in them to evolve and change.

Thing is, us humans don’t like change very much. We like to say that we need “stability” but what that stability often actually is, is stagnancy. We tend to like things to be predictable. To know what is going to happen next. To have our routines. We aren’t particularly fond of surprises.

We also don’t tend to enjoy endings. We look at our relationships and declare they have “failed” when they don’t last forever; that we failed because we couldn’t force a relationship to keep going when it needed to die. We carry so much fear of the unknown, that we often stay in relationships well past their expiration date, creating resentment at best, and actual harm at worst, towards the other and or ourselves, often leading to very hurtful and messy endings anyhow.

Endings always lead to beginnings though.