Relationships and Loneliness

The ends of so many relationships begin the same way. You start to feel lonely with someone. And loneliness within a relationship is really hard to fix. You can’t just go to the other person and say, “Help me not feel so lonely with you.” Could they even do that if they wanted to? First, they would have to understand the source of this feeling and there is a good chance that this is something that you cannot even define yourself.

I think that the things that we crave the most from other people are never things we can ask for. They are things that must happen naturally and cannot be forced. We can ask someone to try to understand us but we cannot ask someone to want to. We can ask someone to notice us but we cannot ask someone to stop seeing through us. We can ask someone to be kinder and more patient but we cannot ask someone for true love. We can only recognize and appreciate these things when someone can give them to us, and learn to forgive them when they can’t.

It’s hard because it’s often nobody’s fault. Sometimes we end up in this situation merely because we had the courage to let ourselves grow and change. And somewhere along the line we grew into someone that the person who used to know us best doesn't understand anymore. 

I’ve always thought that a truly wonderful relationship, just like a truly wonderful day, should be easy. It should be magical in a slow, sensuous, flowing kind of way. When you lose that flow I think is when the loneliness starts to fill in the gaps. I just don’t think you can force it to come back through therapy, or effort, or changing. You can either wait to see if it does or move on. There are those who leave to soon and those who stay too long. And sometimes timing is everything.