How Someone Exits a Relationship

How someone exits a relationship tells you a lot about that person. You may learn things you did not want, but no doubt needed to know about the other.

There are at least five types of exits, revealing five kinds of persons, or at least states of persons at the point of their exiting the relationship. Each type of exit relates to the building, maintaining, or destroying of a relational bridge between persons. My mother taught me never to burn my bridges behind me, because I could not know when I might have to turn back, cross over, and renew a former relationship. Over the years, this has proven to be wise advice. Advice I have shared with others along their life journeys, to which some have listened, but others sadly have not.

It would be a kinder, more peaceful world if more of us tended to the bridges between us, and kept as many as possible in good working order, at least from our side of the equation. Here are the five types:

Bridge building: this is the person who really cared about you, and who continues to care and evidence a genuine concern for your well-being. An example would be a divorcing spouse who remains committed to the financial well-being of their former partner.

Bridge forgetting: this is the person who seems to immediately forget what had been between you two, as in the “out of sight, out of mind.” They may be in a state of denial, wanting to look the other way and pretend that there was never an “us” between the two of you.

Bridge ignoring: more than merely forgetful, this is the kind of person who willfully wants you to know that they do not care, that they are not thinking about you. This is the person who has become seemingly indifferent to you, which is the true opposite of love.

Bridge escaping: this is the kind of person who is especially weak and seeks to move fast and far away from you, as if to get beyond any pain and remembrance. Perhaps the sight of you brooks regret or guilt, or still smoldering emotions of love which the other does not want to feel or recognize as existing.

Bridge burning: this is the most heinous kind of all, the one who seems to actively want to see you suffer, who appears so heartless as to cause you continued pain, either by denying responsibility or claiming that what is happening is all your fault. This person may flaunt their new relationship or life in front of you in such an insensitive, brazen manner, that any possible future relationship slowly burns away before your eyes.

Psychologist Karen Horney said there were three types of people: those moving toward others, those moving away from others, and those moving against others. You will discover when a person exits a relationship with you which kind of person they are. If the other is the kind who moves away from or against others, you are better off without that relationship.

And if the other is the kind who moves towards persons, seeking to rebuild a bridge of continuing concern, then a bridge between you could remain passable, from the others’ side at least. That would put the ball squarely in your court, so to say. Then issue would be, how will you respond? Which of these five exit types best fits you? You may learn as much about yourself as you will about the other.