When relationships end, whether it be a romantic relationship, friendship, professional relationship, or various other types of relationships we engage in throughout our lives, “Who ended it?” seems to be a common question that gets asked. I’ve noticed recently though that the more common question, often not said aloud but fixated on internally is, “Whose fault was it?” What I believe we’re asking here is who was right and who was wrong, who is good and who is bad. We are looking for a concrete, simple answer to something that is usually quite nuanced. 

As I’ve said before, relationships are hard and complex. We are taking one person’s nervous system and attachment style and their preferences and personality and connecting it with another person’s. It’s a matter of a variety of factors, some easier to understand at surface level than others, why we connect in positive, easy ways with some people and why we don’t with others and what other people activate within us. In very different types of relationships – friendships, romantic relationships, and professional relationships, we may even connect extremely well with someone’s system in the context of one of those relationship but would not work well with that person in a different dynamic. But regardless of the type of relationship, when things come to an end we tend to want to make meaning of the complexity of the ending and often do so by extremely over-simplifying it to “fault”. The problem is, this causes us pain, makes us angry towards someone else or ourselves, and reduces the situation to very black and white thinking. And what’s interesting is we don’t do this as readily with other things that don’t work for us. We save our overly simplified rationales for very complex situations!

I’ll give an example of what I mean. If someone needs an antibiotic and they are prescribed amoxicillin but then have an allergic reaction to the medication, does the doctor or patient now see amoxicillin as a “bad” medication? Do they think the patient was “bad” because their body could not tolerate amoxicillin? I think the answer to both questions is likely no. The doctor would find another medication better suited to this patient’s particular system and amoxicillin would continue to be a solid antibiotic that works well for many people. No one is bad – not the medicine, nor the person, and yet, they did not work well when they engaged with one another.

So why do we seek to find fault in relationship endings between humans? My sense is that we want to feel better about loss, avoid the pain and shame of endings, and long to make sense of situations. Loss and endings are often quite painful, even if they are for good reasons. In that pain our brains seek answers to help settle ourselves. This makes so much sense and is so very human of us to do.

I think there is another way though, when we can’t get concrete answers to endings that we so badly want answers to. What if instead of finding whose “fault” it is, we instead focus more on the gray areas of what occurred? Finding some neutral or even positive re frames for the experience and leaning into mindfulness practices and self-compassion can help decrease black and white thinking and increase curiosity and more internal spaciousness for a more nuanced narrative. This might look like taking a statement such as “This is all my/their fault” and turning it into  “We both contributed helpful and harmful things to this relationship. There was both care and challenges there. I did my best and I assume they did their best.” This is very hard work, and I know from personal and professional experience that when we approach things with more curiosity, flexibility, and examine multiple realities, we tend to find greater ease. This doesn’t mean a loss becomes easy, but it means you don’t have to suffer as much through it. I will also say, generally speaking, that usually a nuanced perspective is the closest thing to a “right” answer that we will ever find. I invite you, the next time you have a loss of relationship, or even just the next time you have a conflict with someone you love, to try to move away from assigning fault, and to shift to a broader way of framing the experience.