How Relationships Die

Out of all the people we have ever met in life, how many are we still talking to? Out of all the people we befriended, how many are still close to us? The ratio is depressingly low. It’s close to one percent, and even less for some. If the number is higher than five percent, you are either lucky or exceptionally good at maintaining relationships. The death of relationships is more common than we think, yet we dread the idea of being separated from people. This is the one thing we are remarkably good at. Statistics suggest it is inevitable. But when we think about separation, we imagine it will come as a shock to us. Most relationships die a natural death. There is no trigger, no dispute, no one big, catastrophic quarrel that destroys everything. Almost all relationships die once the context they were built upon disappears. A relationship that began in a shared office, on a university campus, or through a shared struggle struggles to survive once that context or environment disappears.…