Not My Failure: Letting Go of a Broken Relationship and Reclaiming Self-Worth

Why do people stay in unhealthy relationships? This reflection explores fear of failure, ego, and emotional attachment—and how letting go can lead to healing, self-acceptance, and a new beginning. Why does a woman enter into an unworthy relationship? Why does she stay in it? And how is it even possible that a fundamentally beautiful and intelligent woman—someone no one would ever suspect—agrees to tolerate behavior from her partner that shows no trace of respect or appreciation? Why are women sometimes unwilling to simply stand up and walk away? While there are many possible answers to this question, I most often encounter the one that is also most characteristic of me (even according to the law of attraction): because they do not want to give up, and they fight for the relationship to the very end. – It is not an easy question – says a friend of mine, after a similar relationship – I think I didn’t get out of it earlier because I simply couldn’t. Maybe it was my ego, maybe my achievement-oriented personality, or maybe women in general are like this, but I simply believed that I would make this marriage work: I could not be a failure.

If I had left, I would have experienced it as a failure, and I could not accept that—not in front of myself, and not in front of others either. When difficult times came in my relationship, I still kept thinking: I am not the kind of woman who gives up, who fails, who can be pushed aside or benched. I will succeed, I will solve it, I will wait until things improve, until we get through the difficult part of the relationship, and then everything will be fine again. Then, as time passed, perhaps my ego became smaller, perhaps the relationship became less important, perhaps I no longer wanted so much to meet expectations, and my emotional attachment may have weakened, because suddenly I no longer felt the failure of the relationship as my own failure. I no longer felt that it was my fault, that I was not good enough, not beautiful enough, not smart or capable enough. Suddenly I thought: this simply didn’t work for us. Together, this was all we were capable of, this was the limit of what we could create. And what doesn’t work does not need to be forced—we should move on, as soon as possible. That’s it. I let go of the idea that I was a failure or unfortunate, and that this relationship had to end in the way I had once imagined. And with that feeling, I somehow became successful again. From the inner decision that my next relationship would work out, that I had everything I needed to be happy again. Today I no longer care what others think about my past relationship—I don’t even understand why I ever cared at all. I was reborn through this new perspective and through the courage to start a new life. I believe it all comes down to this: not identifying ourselves with failure, not dying inside when something doesn’t go as planned, and accepting that this is life—and moving on. — Agatha Seymour