Unexpected Departures

Is there anything worse than waking up one morning only to discover that your lover just up and left? Perhaps they even stooped as low as leaving you with nothing more than a crummy post-it note, blubbering voice mail – or gasp – a two-word text.

One day they were there and the next they weren’t, leaving you wondering if the relationship ever existed in the first place. But something had to have happened, right? You must’ve done something wrong to warrant such an outcome. Or could it be possible, that they left because of nothing at all.

Why, why, why?
So, now that they’re gone, there are likely many questions that need answering. Should you have known? Did you miss out on a shift in behavior? When faced with questions about the future, the same future you once aligned on as a duo, their more recent responses were a less than lusty, “I don’t know.”

Sometimes, in the thick of a relationship, you might feel like someone went from all to nothing overnight, when in fact, they might have been dropping subtle clues along the way – hints, that you may not have been ready to accept as fact. Or could it be that their coping skills just stink? Crisis can be an almost instant sanity check on the sustainability factor in a relationship. Like when they leave you after you lose your job, or a parent gets sick.

It’s not you, it’s me
The bizarre nature of your situation could provoke you to start sleuthing like a modern day Sherlock Holmes… But what if, after you’ve done the diligence, you have still been unable to dig up any good explanation for why your mate left. Could it be that there are none to be found?

Experts confirm that there is in fact a “type” that seeks out exclusive relationships with no intention of taking them beyond the initial state of commitment, leaving you wondering, why? The serial monogamists of our world (those engaging in committed exclusive relationships for anywhere from 2-12 months), may simply crave nothing more than the intoxicating thrill that is felt most intensely during the initial stages of a relationship.

Get past the why
At a certain point, when you have rehashed the multitude of potential explanations as to why your lover may have left, eventually, all of the “whys?” need to slide to the side to make room for the I. It’s time to choose yourself over the person that passed up the opportunity to know you for the long haul. The reality is, until that happens you are cluttering up your world so much so that you’re not leaving any room to find that special person that won’t run for the hills when you need them the most.

Everybody deserves that chance to find someone who will know, without a doubt, that you’re the one. In order to live a happy and fulfilling life, we can only give up a fraction of our time to looking back, without hampering our chances for moving forward. If you spend all of your days dissecting the past, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to discover what the future holds. The best thing we can do to restore harmony from the fallout of an AWOL lover, is to release our need to know why, for the sake of saving the I.

As upsetting as it may be, knowing why will not change the fact that someone that you loved dearly, left. So move forward, with your head held high, because you’re the type of person that would know better than to do what they did, and you deserve someone that sees the possibility of the future in the same way that you do. Good luck!