The Way They Leave Tells You Everything

The anatomy of a relationship is comprised of many intricate parts, and when it begins to fall apart, there are many subtle and not so subtle signs if we have the courage to see them and name them for what they are. It is a slow erosion that gradually washes away the coastline, inch by beautiful inch. It is a cancer that spreads silently and insidiously until one day too late it is discovered and it is already in the bones.

If you are brave enough to look, lean in and listen for breath and feel for pulse, you will know the relationship is on its deathbed. And these tiny deaths in a relationship open the door to the end. When the connection shrinks, that is when partners become vulnerable to the things that finally kill the parts of the relationship that are still alive and desperately trying to hang on to survive. The insidious covert devaluation that happens before the final discard makes you question your own reality and allows them to murder you a little bit every day with clean hands and an even cleaner conscience.

In retrospect, the harbingers of doom were at our doorstep; the bellwether of change was all around us. It’s just so easy to look away and deny it.

The slow pulling away is palpable. You feel it in your gut but try to dismiss it.