What Makes a Relationship Fail?

There isn't just one reason ...

What Makes a Relationship Fail?

The other day, I came across an online poll for ‘Human Behavior.’  One of the questions on the poll asked:

“What is the top reason a good relationship stops working?”

Long after I finished the poll, the question remained, like a crystal splinter I couldn’t dig out.  Mainly because I don’t feel there IS only one top reason.  A deal-breaker for me may not carry the same weight as it would for another.

I decided it would be interesting to tackle the question differently. To do that, I’m using an old New England verse my grandmother needlepointed, framed, and hung in her kitchen above the sink:

I have no idea who wrote it, but I feel safe in saying it must have been someone very wise a long time ago. I would love to sit and chat with them.

Common sense tells me the verse means pretty much what it says; however, taking it line by line, it could be made to explain a bad relationship, too.

** Line One: “Use It Up”

When it was written, I’m sure it meant homemade lye soap, food, the deer dad shot, field-gutted, and hung over his saddle to bring home, and maybe maple syrup from the tap in the maple tree. Everything else I can think of would be perishable.

On first glance, you may think it has nothing to do with a relationship, but look closer. Use It Up can easily apply to a bad relationship.

Look at it like oil and water.  If we keep shaking the oil and water, like for a salad dressing, it’s okay, but it only stays mixed while we‘re shaking it. Who the hell wants that kind of instability in a loving relationship? Emotionally, one would feel … used up.

** Line Two: “Wear it Out”

This line seems clear. When it was written, it meant clothes, shoes, pack mules, maybe even the Sears Roebuck catalog that came once a year that everyone drooled over.

Can we compare this line to a relationship? Sure we can — it’s only too obvious. In a bad one, if you’re the only one working on it, you would feel totally, completely … worn out.

** Line Three: “Make it do”

When it was written, I’d say this line referred to mending old curtains, patching children's clothing and shoes, repairing an old handmade rag rug handed down from Great Aunt Gertie, maybe even the old mare they rode and sometimes hitched to the wagon to go into town.

“Hell, Mary, she's still a damn good mare and she gets us around.  'Course she's grown awful swayback, but hell’s afire, we can make ‘er do.”

Now, apply that same line and logic to a relationship, and it makes me mad. I don’t see a place in any relationship for make it do. Ever.

I think a relationship is like a bank account. Maybe that’s a poor analogy, but please bear with me ...

For a bank account to work, we have to put more into it than we take out. That way, we’ll always have a positive cash flow.

When we only withdraw money, over time the account dwindles and it will bottom out when there’s nothing left.

For a relationship to work, both parties have to be putting more into it than they take out. I realize there are times when only one party is able to contribute —I’ve allowed for that.

In a good relationship, the other party is still contributing their share and often even more, so in the long haul, the relationship works, because there is always more going into it than is being taken out —but you never, ever … make it do.

Of course, if you have an always-giver paired with an always-taker and the giver doesn’t mind, they could possibly feed each other’s needs. In a sad way, those relationships could work.

I had a similar relationship, once.  As the always-giver, I DID mind.  It just didn’t work for me. The make it do … wore me out and to stop feeling all used up, I chose to … 

** Line Four:  “Do Without.”