(FYI: MoTH stands for Matters of The Heart, pretty cool acronym in my opinion..?)
Many people express their regret or sorrow when it comes to the breakdown of a relationship between two people. It doesn't necessarily need to be between a couple, it happens to generally almost every kind of relationship and definitely happens to everyone as well. Remember your "best friend" that you've declared many years ago, or that "close friend" that you used to have heart to heart conversations in the past but no longer do so? Whoever it is, or whatever the reason why, the fact is that it's already past tense, and typically there's not much to be done about it.
People change, shit happens, and people drift apart. That's perfectly normal. It's part and parcel of life, and change is constant. I don't know if the people reading this (yes, that means all of you) will still be keeping in touch with me in the future, because we all know that we will certainly move on to other things in our lives. We'll meet new people, we'll feel slightly more disconnected from the past, that is for sure. But what keeps some old relationships strong, while others crumble under the test of time?
When two people lose interest in each other, it's pretty hard to pick up the pieces. Naturally, a loss of interest means that one isn't probably going to try as hard to mend the relationship as he/she used to, simply because it doesn't matter as much anymore. It's the cold hard truth: everyone is inherently selfish, and we pick our friends who are willing to stay by us and commit as much as we do (at the very least, if not more). There's just going to be a point where someone feels that it's not worth the time or effort to catch up, and the whole relationship just gets let go. Things become awkward, nothing pretty much further can be said besides briefly talking about how great the past used to be, and maybe some superficial changes that honestly, can be just found out through stalking the other person's social media.
It gets a lot worse if something unexpectedly happens between two people with good relations to turn on its head. Sometimes, we might do things that may offend the other party greatly, and it sets the relationship into compromise. Whether unintentional or not, the other party is hurt for sure, and this is when both parties have to assess many things through their own judgement, for example:
What have I done wrong?
Should I forgive this other person?
Is there a way to make up?
Should I just leave this matter to rest and let the other party take his/her time to get over it?
More often than not, we tend to make judgements on our own by trying to be smart: We think we have enough apathy or emotional capacity to know how the other party feels and deal appropriately, but most of the time both parties tend to overthink and it just leads to problems being either unresolved, complicated or things just become plain awkward after the resolution of the problem.
When I look back at certain events that happened, or misunderstandings that occur between other people, the question that I ask myself the most frequently is:
Had things been done differently, had the two parties tried to communicate openly about the problem at hand, would things have not turned out so bad?
This is a very essential timing for communication to step in and work wonders, but yet rarely do we see such an occurrence. The answer to the question above is pretty simple and often lamented about:
It's easy to be the bystander and give advice, but it becomes a near impossible task when you're the one involved. It's not that open communication hasn't been considered, but rather one can't find himself/herself to make the approach.
One might think that communication is simply trying to get ideas and points to each other, but it's way more than just that. Effective communication comes with the risk of putting one's trust on the line, and many people just cannot afford or don't know how far they should go. Even the simplest act of saying "hello" can be difficult when it comes to approaching strangers, and it's through our communication that we tell how close we are to the other party. One has to put down his/her pride to be able to overlook many concerns, just to establish a proper connection with the other person, because there are just so many small things put on the line: The trust that people won't judge you when you reveal something a bit more personal about yourself, the potential "humiliation" that comes along from failure when you try to do something funny to amuse others, the awkwardness and the possible negative judgement from a stranger when you introduce yourself. Whatever it is, there's bound to be a risk of getting "hurt" (to give something without getting anything positive back in return), and it's up to one to decide whether it's worth getting "hurt", whether it's worth it to be vulnerable to all of these negative receptions that can possibly damage one's own self-esteem.
With that, perhaps it's for the better that two people who didn't manage to work out remain as such, and maybe it's not such a pity after all that separation happens: It takes a lot of effort and bravery to continuously place yourself in a situation where two people require tremendous amounts of effort to sustain the relationship between them, and most people end up in an increasingly common conclusion: too tired to try, too tired to "be bothered with this shit", "sick and tired" of having to deal with all of this.
Everyone has varying thresholds, but it doesn't change the fact that there is bound to be a limit to how much we want to give ourselves up for this particular relationship, and when the limit is crossed the need and want to commit any further is all lost: There's no point trying to continuously place yourself in a "struggle" where you don't think that anything positive will come out of it even if you tried your best.
Perhaps, it's just easier to hate than to love.
Most people think that likability comes in a spectrum; it ranges from the most hated person in the world to the most loved person in the world. To me, love and hate is merely separated by a fine line. No one is safe; anyone can cross the borders of love and hate within a flash. When one is tired of loving and caring, the easiest way out is to detach and disconnect, to run away. Hating does this best: we no longer need to place our concern into the people we hate, we don't have to subject ourselves to mental torture or make "sacrifices" for them. Hate allows us to protect us from being vulnerable, it allows us to be aggressive without having internal conflicts within ourselves to be "rational" and "objective". With hate, all of our discontent can finally be released without a hinge of doubt, and it's the medium for us to experience freedom to flush out everything negative built up within ourselves when we're not hating.
I haven't actually thought out very far about this, but I can understand where emotionally troubled people are coming from: Usually disliked or hated, it's not entirely because they want to be like that, nor is it because they don't know how to be likable, but it's because it's simply easier to not give a damn. Fewer chances to screw things up, less probability to get hurt by others. Trust is extremely hard to earn, but can be lost easily in a flash, and from there it is impossibly hard to rebuild to the same level before it was lost. People who have lost their trust simply can not afford another repeat or relapse of the breakdown of their trust, and hence they stay away.
Maybe, when two people who like each other turn into hating each other, it's not because they truly dislike each other, but because they know that it's not practical to allow the both of them to struggle. If liking or loving somebody results in both parties to be hurt as a result, then maybe escape will truly make both parties feel better. Hating or disliking each other achieves that: it offers the chance to move on, it stops us from lamenting the past and wondering about what could have been. It doesn't give the best closure, but it is the easiest way to obtain a closure without having to make any more compromise. Perhaps, that's the most positive thought to believe when two people aren't able to patch up and separate.
Maybe, just maybe,
To dislike or to hate someone else, is the purest form of love.
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