You Don’t Break in a Breakup

Signs of Trouble

Love doesn’t disintegrate overnight. The early days of your relationship were like a freshly painted wall. Smooth, even, ready to be filled with images of the life that awaited you. The wall underneath may not have been perfect, but with the fresh coat of paint it looked nice and solid. But every wall eventually gets scratches-maybe even some from baggage that arrived on move-in day. Perhaps you’ve been too busy to deal with it. Maybe you told yourself it wasn’t a problem, but you’ve just been saying that to smooth things over. You know the scratches won’t go away until you do something about them, but you can live with them for a while. Then, over time, more scratches accumulate. You walk past them every day. If they start to bother you, you might do some touch-up. Maybe you’ll even decide it’s time to repaint that wall. In the same way, flaws emerge in relationships. The hustle of life generates scratches and nicks that won’t go away unless you address them. Maybe your partner always leaves the gas tank empty. Maybe they spend too much time telling you how much their boss annoys them. Maybe they complain every time you have to visit your parents. What each person sees as a scratch will be different, but these are small issues. You could touch them up if you wanted to, and that knowledge should give you the confidence to live with them. But you must be willing to accept them as part of the charm of a lived-in house. Every if doesn’t mean the walls will collapse. If we tret every scratch like an earthquake, we put unnecessary stress on the relationship. In other words, pettiness stretches scratches into cracks.