How a Relationship Post-Mortem Can Improve Your Life

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I was once accused of using my relationship history as fodder for another article. Someone else called me the Taylor Swift of writers and failed to see how that was a compliment. But I’ve never excavated my past purely for entertainment. I don’t conduct relationship postmortems in an attempt to gain attention, power, or money. I never did it for revenge. I only ever did it for the very best of reasons — to heal, to grow, and to make peace with my past.

There’s a method to this madness.

Uncovering the Truth

The truth is that we don’t always want to take a closer look at our relationship history when it just makes us sad. It would be far easier to keep moving forward, never once looking in the rearview, but I’ve learned that the things we don’t deal with, the things we try to bury, often bury us instead.

So, I looked back. I bought a magnifying glass for the occasion. I put everything we said and did, everything we didn’t say and should have or did say and shouldn’t have, everything that we once were … I put it all under a microscope. I leaned in for a closer look. I leaned out to see the bigger picture. I turned it sideways and upside down trying to see how two people so in love could fall so disastrously out of it.

Understanding Motives

I looked for motives and premeditation. I tried to uncover clues that could have been there all along. I just wanted to make sense of something that didn’t make sense to me at all. I needed answers. So, yes, I dug it all up — not to recycle yet another feeling but to fully feel the one that I was buried in. To dig myself out along with all the memories.

I started with the usual suspects. The resentment and small slights. The misunderstandings and broken communication. The expectations and disappointment. The triggers — so many of them ready to go off at a moment’s notice. One misstep. One false move.One tiny imperfection he wished I didn’t have so that he could love me.

Going Beyond the Usual Suspects

But a relationship postmortem that stops there will always be incomplete. Because there were two people in that relationship. And one of them was me.

It’s impossible to truly learn and grow without an element of self-awareness and accountability. I could look at his faults all day — and the faults of every single person who came before. It served nothing and no one. Instead, I looked at myself. I took out the microscope. I put myself under cross-examination. I needed answers, and the clues were all there if only I were brave enough to examine them.

I took apart my attachment style, my lack of trust, and the undercurrents of my anxiety. I looked at a neurodiverse thought pattern that would never stay on track. My frequent interruptions. My need to fix things. My need to give love, but my fear of taking up enough space to take any of it for myself.

Trial by Fire, A Healing Flame

I couldn’t change if I didn’t see it, so I looked at it all. I examined every scrap of evidence against us. I made it my mission to figure out what happened because I never wanted to feel that broken again.

This is the purpose of examining our relationships when they’re over. It’s not an excuse to wallow in misery or to stir up our anger. It’s a chance to see it all, to feel it, and to finally begin to heal. It’s holding them accountable while we hold ourselves to the same standards. It’s admitting that we loved, and even if we did it imperfectly, it meant something. It’s acknowledging that we lost, and even if we did that imperfectly as well, it’s not any less valid. It’s faith and hope — that we can heal, that we can be at peace, and that we can love again.

I didn’t take my relationships apart because I was bored. I didn’t examine their pieces because I needed something to write about and topics weren’t close at hand. I didn’t look for answers to find someone to blame.

I was broken, and I needed to put myself back together. I couldn’t do that without understanding how I got there. I needed to find peace, and I’ve learned the hard way that we can’t build peace on top of an unexcavated disaster.

Healing the Hard Way

I understand myself better now. I found a little more self-compassion as I took apart my failed love story. I found more compassion for him, too. I healed, and if I did it the hard way, I haven’t found another way to do it.

We do the best we can. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. Even when it doesn’t look like it. We try. Sometimes, we fail. But the point isn’t whether we succeed or fail, it’s the fact that we try and keep trying. We love and keep loving. We hurt, but if we take the time, we heal, too.

Originally published on Medium