Completing Relationships

State anything and everything you might otherwise hold as a resentment about your history together. This includes whatever is upsetting to you about the way the relationship ended or is currently ending. You can include specific historical incidents that you hold onto as well as overall trends in your partner's behavior throughout stretches of the relationship.

The idea here is that expressing what you're angry about, letting your partner know what was not okay with you, can often complete it for you. You no longer need to carry the resentment around inside yourself. Your partner has heard it clearly spoken.

Note that these don't have to be particularly enlightened or self-aware statements. Your resentments may or may not be justified. It doesn't matter. They may reveal your pettiness and tendency to blame others rather than taking responsibility. That doesn't matter either. What matters is that you are speaking them with the intention to clear them up.

After your partner expresses each resentment, it can be useful to just say "thank you," thanking them for saying it out loud rather than just holding onto it and silently believing it about you indefinitely into the future. Do not respond in any other way, in particular in your own defense. The idea is just to hear what your partner has to say to you. Really try to take it in, even if it makes you feel bad.

After you have both stated your resentments and heard your partner's, it often naturally happens that you want to apologize. Take some time to tell your partner everything you want to apologize for, which may or may not include the things they expressed resentment about.

Apologizing is appropriate if you realize, in retrospect, that you wish things had gone differently, or that you had behaved differently (for example, if you know you screwed something up). Apologizing is challenging. Often we don't apologize because we feel so bad about our role in past events. In order to apologize to your partner, you almost have to implicitly forgive yourself, which is not always easy.

Keep in mind that you are apologizing for your own sake, about the things YOU need to apologize for. This is the complement to expressing resentments, an opportunity to clear up what was not okay with you about your own behavior.

Note that the most effective apologies include an acknowledgment of the negative impact you had on the other person. They do not include justifications for your behavior. Again, don't respond except by thanking them for the apology, even if they do it clumsily. Especially don't try to dismiss what they are saying. The apology is important to them even if it doesn't seem like a big deal to you.

Having expressed your resentment and heard your partner's apologies, it is natural to want to forgive them. Forgiveness does not imply that you condone your partner's past bad behavior. Forgiveness comes from having compassion toward them and being able to imagine how, when everything is taken into account, their behavior was somehow constrained to be what it was.

In the future, you may expect them to never repeat the behavior, but you are willing to forgive past transgressions, to give up the right to resent them into the future. Forgiving is something you're doing for yourself. You may or may not be forgiving your partner for the things they apologized for. Rather, you are doing this for YOU, to give yourself the opportunity to get complete with everything that happened.

Forgiveness is a deeply spiritual practice. It can be difficult to do before expressing your anger and resentment. Once you've done both, in the proper sequence, you are left much lighter. Thank your partner for each thing they are being gracious enough to forgive you for. These may or may not be things that you think you need to be forgiven for, but they are things your partner has been holding onto, and the expression of forgiveness indicates their intention to stop doing that. That's worth a sincere thank you!

Now that you have made your way through many of the negatives of your past (transgressions, omissions, unfortunate incidents), you will hopefully have cleared some space to recognize the incredible contributions your partner has made to your life. This is a chance to recognize all the ways you are different because of your life with your partner up until now. You may take many of these things for granted, yet it is likely that much of who you are now is a result of what your partner has given to you.

This step, and the next one, are about recognizing the positives. Expressing these is essential to completing the past, as we are at least as likely to hold back our appreciations as our negative feelings. Instead of thanking your partner for thanking you, offer some equivalent of "you're welcome" or "it was my pleasure."

Having shared your gratitude for all the ways your partner has changed you, take some time to honor and acknowledge what you loved about them and about who you were together. It is especially important at the end of a relationship not to pretend to yourself that you don't care about what you are losing.

In the short term, it can feel easier to justify separating if you devalue your partner or your past. In the long term, this will leave you incomplete. To counteract the pull to devalue your past, share everything you will miss. Be real. This is often where grieving comes into the process, though sometimes having gone through all the preliminary steps makes this last one just a pleasure.

It is important to remember that ending does not equal failure. You have had a long, successful relationship that, for whatever reason, is now ending.

Thank your partner for acknowledging what has been good. You may discover tears accompanying this step. Crying is a natural and helpful part of letting go.

Saying goodbye is an optional stage. If you are both clear that you are ending a relationship, you might want to each take a moment to say "Goodbye." The goodbye may be symbolic (that is, not implying you will never see each other again). It is a chance to acknowledge, out loud, in no uncertain terms, that something is ending.

The relationship is over, and while it may still be difficult to understand what that means, it is important to face it together, in part in order to allow yourselves to grieve. If you are engaged in this process to complete the past of an ongoing relationship, saying goodbye can mean saying goodbye to the past. You are ending a chapter, choosing to step across a threshold together into a different future.

After this process is over, you may choose to declare the past complete. You will still remember each other, still move forward in the world having been changed by the story you have lived together until this point. The future you have opened up, however, will now be unpredictable. The past is determined. The future is free choice.