Goodbye

"Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes its letting go ."
-Hermann Hesse, writer

Personal growth occurs when our comfort levels are tested. Sometimes it is easier to remain in a relationship than it is to walk away; our rationales are sometimes ones only we can understand. People are known to make irrational choices for the sake of love, such as sacrificing a valuable friendship or their personal integrity for a noble cause. One study by the University of Chicago linking altruism and true love, found a correlation between altruism and happy marriages. The study reported that the connection between romantic love and altruistic behavior probably comes from an appreciation of love developed in a healthy marriage and reflects the connection between marriage and love in general. The research was based on data from in-home surveys of 1,329 adults, conducted every two years with support from the National Science Foundation.

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing. "
-Anais Nin, writer

Love is not work, but takes work. Too often people focus on the wedding, but lose sight of the marriage. Too often we rush into relationships without allowing ourselves to naturally float along its pleasant stream, veering whichever way the ebb currents flow. Too often neglect sets in as the focus shifts from investing in the relationship to other pursuits. Love needs to be continually cultivated for it to thrive. I firmly believe that we are all authors of our love story, and our relationship with our lover will reflect the quality of attention devoted to it.

"You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved, and you will never understand what pain really is until you have lost it."
-Anonymous

I was raised to believe "if you love someone, let them go. If they return to you, it was meant to be. If they don’t, their love was never yours to begin with." No one knows the source of that quote, but it holds validity. Walking away from a relationship becomes more difficult if the relationship is perceived to have potentially increasing value. The future is unknown with respects to many aspects of our lives, leading us to question the legitimacy of our ability to shape the outcome.

"Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow."
-J.M. Barrie, writer

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love."
-Washington Irving, writer