I don’t have a significant other. I have been single without dating for over 10 years. But I have been married 3 times in marriages that lasted for 5, 7, and 15 years so I do have experience. I am recently gaining more insight into my breakups by understanding better my attachment style then which was the avoidant one. I avoided intimacy by having my main emotional attachment be to my research/writing life. My computer was my main companion. I realize now I left my 2nd marriage–which produced a daughter–as we were on the threshold toward breaking down our walls. He was posted overseas for a year, we were legally separated, and I explored dating. Nothing changes a relationship as much as dating other people. I examine my past but I don’t live there. Nor do I spend energy on regret.

From The Golden Rule of Relationships Nobody Talks About:

Make your relationship the top priority in your life. That’s the golden rule. When you do so, you take chances. You put the other person first. As long as both of you make it a top priority, you’ll find it easier to compromise and look for win-win outcomes. You do kind things for each other without being asked.

All of the loving behaviors that enhance your relationship flow from making that special person your first concern.

During the early stages of a relationship, we’re insecure about our status, uncertain of where we stand. We make our relationships the top priority to achieve that certainty in status.

Time passes. We get comfortable and secure. Our relationship goes from being the top priority to one of many priorities.

Your personal ambitions and desires re-emerge. There’s nothing wrong with that. We need our space, but sometimes we forget the tenuous circumstances that forged our relationship and the risks and sacrifices we made to make them safe and secure. We get lazy and take things for granted.

If that’s where you find yourself, put your other priorities aside, and remember the golden rule.

From An Ex-Codependent’s New Theory of Relationships:

Nobody knows what they are doing. We are all just blind people walking each other home.

People will take you as far as they can go and you will take those people as far as you can go. Sometimes this is a really far distance for a really long time and sometimes this is only a short sprint together.

But eventually, there comes a point where you must let them go and they must let you go because it is time for the next leg.

Maybe “letting go” looks like ending the relationship or maybe “letting go” means ending the old relationship and starting a new relationship together, but there is always a point where you must accept you both have gone as far as you can go within the container of your current relationship, and you must let this container die to make room for the next leg.

This is a sad time, but take heart — it is a promise that good things are coming to help you on your next leg of life.