A few days ago I wrote about a personal issue between me and a partner of 21 years.

My sad details are irrelevant but the important part was the “mechanism” of relationships, including how to start them, nurture them, and end them. Obviously my current concern is the end, but let’s not lose sight of The Start. A dating website has discussion groups entitled “Who should make the first move?” and “Should you wait for him to ask the first question?” Hm. As a young man, wondering how to start things never came up: I dove in without regard for personal safety.

Now, in the senior years, many of us are not only unsure of how to make the first move, but also unsure if we should. Are we allowed? Is it proper? These questions can still be answered with the exuberance of youth: Dive right in. Most seniors still won’t, but consider the option: waiting? The object of your interest may die before you get up the nerve.

Nurturing a relationship would take too long to explain and I’m not the best at it, anyway. This last was the longest ever, and it still did not last. We’ll talk nurturing, later.

But The End…in years of my own personal relationships, and those of close friends, The End is never simple, never easy. The Christian concept of forgiveness adds to the problem. Many a female in my past was in relationship characterized by mistreatment but kept forgiving, kept enduring. Is that wrong?

In discussing human problems we allow for the spectrum of human behavior, but in this discussion we will only deal with the “two people who truly love each” other scenario, the one where both–over many years–collect and pile up small injustices until they become a molehill. Eventually, one of the participant’s molehill becomes a mountain and a “switch is flipped”, which cannot be “unflipped”. The one with the flipped switch then needs to exit, to find relief, to find something new, find greener grass. The remaining partner never understands because the remaining partner looks at their molehill and wonders “I put up with theirs, why can’t he/she/them put up with mine?” The defining characteristic of this ending is that both departed and remaining partners think they are right, think they are the victims, and are the aggrieved. The worst case scenario for intelligent, well-meaning people.

Yes, I’ve experienced this, but been there for many others, male and female, when it happened. In reality, neither is really wrong, but friends and family take sides, anyway, and then…well, anything can happen. It doesn’t help to mention to all the “two sides to every story” nugget. It doesn’t help to say time will heal everything, either. With this ending, both sides suffer, and have unresolved questions about why. And sometimes unresolved questions cause irrational acts. Ugh. Again, everyone suffers. And the two actor’s communication falls apart, ending all hope.

Maybe this ending is an American thing. Maybe our rich and powerful drug companies could develop a pill for endings/divorce that wipes out memory and leaves both participants with a clean slate. It would be a moneymaker.

But it is life. Having The End happen is not new, but to have it happen at a senior age is. The “time will heal all wounds” becomes irrelevant. Moot. Much like seniors.

It is still life, but a new kind, an unexplored territory with a definite horizon in the foreseeable future, for both of us.

Time to dive right in.