When my marriage was nearing its end, I felt desperate to understand what I was doing wrong.
So I looked around at all the people who seemed to be doing it right. Friends who had been in long-term, stable relationships for 20, 30, 40 years. The ones who really had it figured out. The real-world fairy tales.
I began interrogating them: how do you do it? What’s the secret? What am I missing?
With enough interviews, I got a clear answer — but it wasn’t the one I was expecting.
At some point in their relationships, every one of them, without exception, could have cheerfully — I mean, cheerfully — thrown the other person out a window.
So how did they get past it?
It turns out there is a secret, a "one weird trick" that makes relationships last.
The difference between relationships that last and ones that don’t is that, in the ones that last…
You don’t leave.
That’s it. It’s tautological, self-definitional.
It’s also wholly unsatisfying. There must be something more to it!
And then I realised what I was missing. I was asking the wrong question.
I was asking what makes relationships last. What I should have been asking is what makes relationships work.
I was conflating the two. But they are not the same.
There are people who stay in terrible, depressing, abusive, long-term relationships. And there are people who leave lovely relationships at the first hint of friction.
Lasting doesn’t mean working. It means lasting.
And ending a relationship doesn’t mean failing. It means ending.
This is true in romantic relationships, in friendships, in business.
We ask the wrong question: “How can I make this last?” The question we should be asking is, “Are we both prepared to make this work?”
If the answer is no, why should we make ourselves suffer?
But if the answer is yes, let’s go.
