the brothers crow

How do you gauge success in a relationship? A quick and simple answer might be, “marriage or break up.” But does anyone honestly believe that? A moment’s thought is all it takes to recognize that there are both good and bad relationships and that there are people maintaining good relationships without the recognition of church and state.

Let’s take it a bit further. Can a relationship be judged ‘successful’ if it ends? Does it become a failure by ending? It’s not a simple question at all, and I’ve been wondering how to answer it for the past several days.

You see, last Friday, my girlfriend and I broke up. We had been dating for almost a year, and had at one point broken up on particularly bad terms. At that point, if asked, I would have easily said that it was a failure. That’s not to say that I hadn’t learned or benefited from it in any way, but I would have said that it was a bad relationship that was ultimately unsuccessful.

But we got back together after that. We dated again for many months, and our relationship grew better. Stronger. Faster. Well, not that last one, but you get the idea. It was good. It wasn’t perfect, and we had our issues, but we worked through them and moved ahead.

We had a difficult choice to make, and that was to try and continue things despite her moving fourteen time zones behind me. We knew it would be hard, but we were willing to try. And we did. But, in the end, it was becoming too difficult for the both of us. So, as a couple, we decided to part ways to preserve what we could. We didn’t want to risk a messier, violent break up due to something else.

No games, no drama, no hate. And so far, no tears.

So was my relationship successful? I don’t know. I gained, I grew. But it ended. So yeah, where does that leave me at the end of the day?

What the hell, I’ll call it a success.