Love and Loss: How relationships and their end lead to growth

Note: This was originally written towards the end of October and wasn’t going to be published but I decided it was worth it to just put it out in the world. 

Today we’re talking about love and loss. Two things we’re all scared of, no matter what we say. It’s fucking terrifying to open yourself up to be loved by someone and express your love toward them. It’s even scarier when there’s a real possibility that it could end at any moment. That uncertainty causes so much pain for a lot of people. It triggers attachment wounds and trauma in ways few things can. There’s a flip side though, it can also be an immense catalyst for growth and healing. Relationships are one of the purest examples of breakdowns and breakthroughs there are. 

So let’s start with the love side of the equation. Whether it’s the possibility of love or real love, it’s something you have to choose to open up to. Even if you don’t “love” your partner yet, you’re with them because you believe it’s possible. That possibility is the foundation for building something. It’s what causes you to open up because if you think it’s possible, you definitely want your partner to think it’s possible too. When you both believe that, that’s what drives things forward. It’s also what allows you to fundamentally change. Someone who has never believed there was a possibility to be loved has to armor up all the time. They put up that armor to guard the parts of themselves that they deem unloveable. Often times this creates a vicious cycle where no one can ever truly get to know them because they’re terrified that once they do they’ll leave. But when that person does drop the armor, and someone does see them and appreciates them for all of that they are, flaws included, that’s when real healing happens. That’s why love or even just the possibility of it, is so powerful. It’s not the same as the basic validation we get when someone tells us what we want to hear. When someone wants to be in a relationship, you feel seen and recognized. Our self-worth can’t come from others, but there is something to be said about that worth being recognized by someone else, someone who you want to build something with. That’s why it’s so hard when that thing you’re building ends. 

When a relationship ends, no matter how long it was, it hurts. There’s the fear of being alone, paired with the grieving of what was and what could’ve been. We internalize all of these stories we’ve told ourselves. For those with pre-existing trauma, it can reinforce all of our worse fears. It feels like a real pain, and we get lost. We don’t want to start over again, we don’t want to get on those fucking apps, we don’t want to go to the bars, we don’t want to go on that blind date, we don’t want to do any of it. We want to sit in the dark listening to sad shit and just wish things could be different. That’s ok to do for a little bit, we all need to grieve, but at some point, you have to get up. How you get up is up to you. In that loss, we can get more than we ever imagined. 

What we can get is true recognition from ourselves. It’s the corniest thing in the world, but we can either be sad that things ended, or happy there was something, to begin with. The easy thing would be to go through life not putting yourself out there and just doing things you like completely independent of other people. There’s no uncertainty in that, there’s no fear in that, there’s no challenge in that. There’s also no reward in that, there’s no growth in that, there’s no love in that. To grow as a person requires us to put ourselves out there to be hurt, to be able to be loved, and lose that love. That’s why I believe relationships are such big catalysts for growth. They require you to be vulnerable and to embrace uncertainty because you're dealing with another person who you don’t have control over. Every day you’re interacting with someone who has their own life, with their own thoughts, feelings, and actions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but in dealing with that you learn a lot about yourself. With every interaction, you learn about how you want to be and how you don’t want to be. You learn how to navigate good times and bad. It’s all learning. When it ends you don’t lose those lessons. 

When something ends it’s always a chance for a new beginning. It’s one of the core tenets of breakdowns and breakthroughs. You use the breakdown to propel yourself forward into your breakthrough. Our losses shape us in the same way our wins do. When you separate from someone it allows you to redefine yourself and chart a new direction. It allows you to look at what worked and didn’t work and then move forward. If you messed up then you have the opportunity to work on those mistakes. If the situation wasn’t right you can find a better situation. The thing you can’t lose sight of is what you gained no matter how it ended. You chose to put yourself out there, you chose to be vulnerable, you chose to connect, and you chose to live. Relationships allow us to learn so much about ourselves and inform how we live our lives. Often times we learn things we could never have seen on our own. Again this is why they’re so powerful. It’s the ultimate act of opening up to what life has to offer because you’re having to play off another human and their complexity. That’s what life is about. It truly is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, because without that love we’d never see what we’re capable of.