How have you viewed yrs lost in a failed relationship?

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

Relationships take a long time. That was the first thing I learned from my first failed relationship. I concluded that I needed to learn from then on vicariously. One does not want to take a 10 years to learn how 10 year relationships work.

Its a good idea not to think you are special. The fortune 500 does not think you are special. That is why they sell to demographics. Failed relationships follow general patterns. Try to learn them and learn from them.

The bolded is very true.

[stan4]

Wasted time?
Kinda depends.
If it's a good relationship with a good person you really loved and loved you back that has just run its course (you've grown apart, you have different needs now, etc), no.

If it's in an abusive situation for decades that you're too scared to leave and there never really was love - just two people using each other...yeah. Wasted time.

[Gray Rider]

I don't regret any of the dinners, vacations, road trips, and quiet nights at home. There have been a couple relationships that ended in damaging ways that I do regret all of the time. I really wish I could go back and avoid those all together but hindsight is 20/20.

[shelato]

When you fall in love, your serotonin levels drop, your norepinephrine levels spike and your dopamine levels spike.

When you break up with someone those hormones all need to reset back to baseline levels, but there can be a lag. But because hormone levels do fall back to baseline levels, that is why there is truth in the phrase time heals everything.

But in the transition time, right after we break up we feel awful. Low serotonin levels and higher norephedrine levels are common in people with OCD, so when your dopamine levels drop after a break up, that is probably why you spend time obsessing over your ex. As your norephedrine level revert back to normal you still have low serotonin levels and that is associated with depression, which is why we feel depressed after we break up.

The point I am getting at is our hormones screw with our emotions after we break up. While I am breaking up with a woman I was in love with, I have definitely gone through periods where I thought most women and relationships suck, but I would be reluctant to draw too many broad conclusions about relationships or women from that period while you are getting over a break up.

[ocpaul20]

I dont think we should forget that time on our own is for a reason and whatever the reason is, is useful to our future. It will go on until we have found what it is we are looking for in that period alone. We cannot hurry it by trying to organize things ourselves or cut corners.



It is just like relationships, we are together to learn stuff and when we have learned as much as we can from the other person, then we need a new teacher to take us to the next level of our education. Looking at relationships in this way, means we do not blame ourselves for what we see as "failures" because they are not failures at all.


Sometimes in life we just need to reframe the situation and think of it differently. This will make us feel different and probably give us less stress and guilt.


And, of course, forgiveness is a big deal. Forgive ourselves so that we dont have regrets, knowing that the situation has resolved itself in the way it was supposed to, so that all parties learn from the experience.

[Masamune]

First, keep in mind that many people have spent lots of years, if not their whole lives, stuck in failed relationships. Most of them missed the early warning signs and didn't end the relationship when they should have. I'm not suggesting shrugging off the failure as something everybody does, but not to compound your hard feelings by thinking that this kind of failure is unique to you.

The relationship was one aspect of your much broader life. I assume you got out and channeled your energy into other things.

[stephenMM]

I'd look at it as: Tomorrow is another day. We can carry the past around with us, or we can move forward and enjoy another day above ground. But we can't do both.

[randomx]

Tbh, l hated that word failed and wished later l could've changed it, just couldn't think of another term at the time.
l don't view it as failed just that it didn't work out or something like but it was more about the yrs.
But alas obviously not much you can do about that either after the fact and it was a conscious effort from us both,just amazing how fast it goes though as we get older isn't it.
l don't regret any of the time as in us as such or see that as wasted either so much of it was really very very special as it was knowing ea other too.

lt's just that on the other hand at the end of the day from a life and practical sense we're both near 6yrs older now and neither of us planned on or wanted to be starting again at this age now.

[Ellwood]

I divorced after 28 years of marriage, something I should have done years before. I went out with friends, many times in a group from work, single and married. I dated here and there but had no interest in a long term relationship. I was enjoying my new found independence, with two kids away at college. I redecorated painting, new carpets, etc. and planned on selling and buying a townhouse or condo.

I met a gentleman whom I worked with, we began dating and fell in love. We moved in together but I had no interest in marriage. He was a wonderful, kind, thoughtful man, whom after nine years I married. Sadly he passed away after almost 30 years together.

Now I am alone again and comfortable that way. I volunteer (which I have always done), go out to lunch with friends but as they say, "comfortable in my own shoes."

[Sonic_Spork]

I'm not going to go back and review what I posted here months ago, but a thought that I'm having here and now about this...

Mind you, I had to make a trip up to Colorado over the last few days and in dealing with my sons' stuff had to also interact with my ex, so I'm all freshly annoyed from having been in his rather odious presence...and very happy to be home with my husband who is relaxing and enjoyable to be around in contrast.

I do have a bit of bitterness in a particular sense. I feel that my first husband did not deserve to father my children, did not deserve my companionship, the efforts I made to try and help him reach goals and have a better life. I feel that I put a lot of patience and work and time and energy into that relationship, to have it repaid with spite and violence and selfishness and pettiness on his part. If I had any ability to take back those years from him, and give them instead to the much more deserving man I married the second time around... But we don't get the years back; we can't un-ring the bell.

Like I know that it was all part of my life story, and as I do like the person I have become thus far I cannot 100% regret it. Yet I do think that one can have some mixed feelings about having invested years of one's life in a bad bet, and hence "lost" them in a sense.