Doomed Relationships

When I’m alone after a breakup, I always poke and prod myself about the failed relationship. My faults are sifted through a fine sieve and left on the floor. I shouldn’t have done this, and this is why the relationship failed. This ritual is ancient and was created through no fault of my own.

After a while, I stopped doing this. Relationships can fail without one of you doing anything wrong. There are so many reasons for two people who are not ideally designed for each other to break up. You can find them all within reach or sight, like pulling an item off a shelf.

We only find a reason to be together after we meet by chance, and it usually doesn’t work out. Most of the time, we lived relatively well when we didn’t know each other existed. It’s easier to keep two people apart than to keep them together. If you do nothing, it’s natural to be alone.

To be in a relationship, there needs to be one vital thing that overcomes all the reasons we don’t necessarily want to be together. You can’t win with mass, so the compelling reason to be in a relationship has to be strong. Most of the time, my relationships have failed because I didn’t have it, it was gone, or I didn’t know it well enough.

Why do we need to be together, why do we need to be together as lovers, and what do we want to do in the future. When you endlessly ask these questions and stretch them to the end, if you don’t have an answer, I think the breakup has come. I’ve never been in a relationship outside of these questions, and I don’t think I ever will be.