Relationships are dynamic, sometimes so that you get to a place and without any warning what was a beautiful experience is now at a crossroads and so the question that most of us face is what to do at your relationship crossroad?
Sleep on it.
Don’t make any hasty decisions based on the height of emotion. Embrace the emotion whether it makes you giggle out loud or cry in agony. Embrace it because these precious moments are the moments when you really get to know and test yourself. Emotions may drive us, but they do not define us. No matter how badly we want to hang on to them, emotions are fleeting. Give yourself the time to process your emotions. This will allow you to approach your relationship crossroad with the clarity you’ll find from taking the time to truly understand the nature of your emotions regarding whatever issue that may ultimately make or break your relationship. You need this time to put things into perspective and make sense of what you’re feeling.
Weigh your values.
If you need to, pull out a piece of a paper and literally write out the pros and cons for each of the roads you can take. The high road? The low road? That’s all up to you. Once you’ve got your emotions in check, it will be easier to navigate through complicated emotions likely to be associated with the possible road you take. Some questions to ask yourself: Where does each road lead? Will it lead you to more or less of the life you want? Can you really see this person as a leading co-star in your life script? Or is he just a supporting character? Are you choosing a path to avoid uncomfortable emotions or lean into them? Use these insights to choose which road you decide to take with your relationship. The best road to take, in my opinion, is the one that will add value to your life rather than taking away from it.
Detach with love.
Now, this is a pretty new and foreign concept for me. I’ve always thought of detachment as a negative coping mechanism or an avoidance technique. I associated detachment with feelings of anger, guilt, resentment or bitter silence. But I recently read an alternative viewpoint on detachment from a book I least expected to find it in. It talked about how practising detachment is more about establishing personal boundaries than it is building walls.
Have a goal.
Our goal is to heal ourselves and our relationship with other human beings, not to coldly distance ourselves, especially from the people who matter most to us. In fact, detachment is far more compassionate and respectful than the unfeeling distancing for when we detach with love, we accept others exactly are they are.
That phrase “detach with love” really struck a chord with me. I guess it made me realize that when people hurt you, whether intentional or not, it’s not always about you as much as it is about them and whatever it is they’re trying to project onto you.
Carve your own path.
As Robert Frost once wrote,” Two roads diverged in a yellow wood I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” You and I both know that everyone has got an opinion about something, especially your relationships. Some people are going to tell you what you want to hear. Others are going to tell you what you don’t want to hear (but need to). Then there are people that are going to tell you, do whatever you want because you’re just going to do it anyway. At the end of the day, it’s still going to be your call. My advice? Let go of the relationship, but hang on to the memories.
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