The answer to every relationship question there ever was, maybe

There’s a good article in the Times today: Divorce and a Haircut, Two Bits, by Scott Smallwood. After the author’s marriage fails he has to find a barber to cut his hair since his wife had previously done it for him. In the barber’s chair he reminisces about the relationship, giving several versions of the marriage’s demise. As it is with all relationships, there is not one single factor that influences their outcome. Rather, it is a combination of various things. It’s a lot easier to blame it all on the other person, blame it on ONE event but the truth is that it’s a slow process of disintegration that culminates in the one event that we tend to blame everything on. In a way, that’s a lot more depressing because it’s inevitable…like death.

Looking back at the most significant relationship of my relatively short life (3 years, and I’m only 23) it all played out too perfectly. Yes, I could blame it on his cheating or on my obstinacy to make compromises but it’s not that simple. It’s a long series of events, people, and attitudes that just piled on top of each other leading to the breaking point. Eventually, someone stops giving a fuck (especially in a long-distance relationship) and everything falls apart. Then came more than one year of trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together but that failed miserably. It’s like gluing up a shattered glass…it may look like a glass, but does it hold water? Well, I still don’t know why things happened the way they did and I’ve made peace with that. The underlying factors seem to be the imperceptible transformations that occur as we grow and change as people. Sometimes we end up being incompatible if the changes don’t happen in the same direction.

Interestingly, some of my qualities that obliquely led to the expletive-filled grand finale (or bust-up) are the ones that my friends and I consider the better ones. So in the end, I don’t offer any apologies. What’s done is done. Move on.

"Well maybe Im just too young
To keep good love from going wrong."
-Lover, You Should Have Come Over by Jeff Buckley