For the Moment, For the Ride

What Are You Carrying?

Before a long trip, we think about what we are going to carry with us. What do we absolutely need? What can we leave behind? What can we find when we get there? What can we afford to lose along the way?

I wonder if we think about the people in our lives and our relationships this way. Not in a transactional sense. Not as if people are things we pack into a suitcase, use for what we need, and discard when the trip is over. But as a way of thinking about what we expect from the people who travel with us. Who is actually coming along for the ride? Who is going all the way? Who is only going a few stops? And perhaps most importantly, do we know the difference?

I read something this week where people were referred to as mere companions; people who are there for the moment, there for the ride, but not necessarily people we can depend on. They are there for a particular part of the journey. They may share experiences with us, give us something we need in that moment, and eventually move on.

There can be something deeply painful about realizing that someone you considered important may have only considered you a companion for a particular part of their journey. Maybe you thought you were building something lasting. Maybe they were simply enjoying the ride. That realization can be difficult because most of us want to believe that when we love someone, the relationship means the same thing to them that it means to us.

We want friendship to be mutual. We want family relationships to feel like family. We want romantic relationships to mean commitment. We want the person who tells us they love us to behave like they love us. And when their behavior does not match what we believe the relationship to be, we start looking for answers.

Therapy and Trying to Understand

People often come into therapy wanting to understand the actions and unactions of other people. Why did they do that? Why didn't they call? Why didn't they apologize? Why did they show up for everyone else but not me? Why did they say they loved me and then treat me this way? Why did they change? Why did they leave? Why wasn't I enough?

Sometimes the work begins with trying to untangle what happened. We go through the relationship from the beginning. We look at the moments when things felt good, the moments when something shifted, the arguments, the disappointments, the ruptures, the apologies, the things that were said, and the things that were never said. We try to identify the pattern and understand what happened.

We can become detectives in our own lives. We replay conversations. We analyze text messages. We remember specific dates. We look for inconsistencies. We try to identify the exact moment the relationship changed. We search for evidence that the person cared. Sometimes we search for evidence that they never did.

And underneath all of that is often a very understandable desire: If I can understand what happened, maybe I can finally stop hurting.

Understanding can feel like it will give us control over something that felt completely out of our control. If we can figure out why someone behaved the way they did, perhaps we can make the story make sense. Perhaps we can find the missing piece that explains why the relationship ended or why we were treated differently than we expected.

But understanding someone else's behavior does not necessarily give us peace.

You can understand someone's childhood, attachment patterns, fears, emotional limitations, defenses, or wounds and still acknowledge that they hurt you. You can understand why someone was unable to love you in the way you needed and still grieve that they couldn't. You can understand why someone withdrew and still feel the pain of being left. Understanding is not the same thing as excusing.

When Understanding Becomes a Search for Closure

Sometimes we become so focused on understanding another person that we unintentionally make our healing dependent on their explanation. This is where the question of closure becomes complicated. We are often told that we need closure in order to move on. We imagine that there is some final conversation waiting for us somewhere: the conversation where they finally tell the truth, the apology that finally makes sense, the explanation that puts all the pieces together, or the moment where they acknowledge what they did and validate everything we have been feeling.

Sometimes that conversation happens, and it can be meaningful. There is something powerful about being able to have an honest conversation about what happened. Being able to hear, "I hurt you. I understand why. I take responsibility for my part." Being able to ask questions and receive answers can help us integrate an experience that felt confusing or unfinished.

Closure can help us organize what happened. It can help us name the experience, separate what belonged to us from what belonged to the other person, and grieve the relationship we actually had instead of continuing to grieve the relationship we hoped it would become.

But closure can also hurt.

Sometimes the answers do not give us what we hoped they would. Sometimes the person minimizes what happened. Sometimes they blame us. Sometimes they tell a completely different version of the story. Sometimes they apologize without taking responsibility. Sometimes they take responsibility for something small while avoiding the larger issue.

And sometimes they lie.

I think this is one of the harder truths about closure: you cannot get honest closure from a dishonest person.

You can ask the questions. You can try to have the conversation. You can listen to what they have to say. But if someone has built the relationship around dishonesty, manipulation, denial, avoidance, or rewriting reality, why would we assume that the final conversation will suddenly be different?

Sometimes we keep going back because we believe that this time they will finally tell us the truth. We think we are trying to end the relationship, but we are still waiting for something from the person who hurt us. We are waiting for them to understand. We are waiting for them to admit it. We are waiting for them to say we mattered. We are waiting for them to regret losing us. We are waiting for the apology. We are waiting for them to confirm that our experience was real.

And in the process, the person remains emotionally present in our lives long after the relationship has ended.

There is a difference between wanting closure and needing someone else to provide it. Sometimes closure is a conversation. Sometimes closure is an answer. Sometimes closure is an apology. And sometimes closure is accepting that the person is not capable or willing to give you any of those things.

That does not mean what happened did not matter. It means you may have to stop asking the person who created the confusion to be the person who resolves it.

The Grief of No Closure

This can be incredibly difficult, especially when the person and relationship was important to you. Especially when the person was a parent, sibling, partner, friend, or someone who was supposed to love you. Especially when you spent years trying to make sense of the relationship.

Sometimes the absence of closure becomes part of the grief. You are not only grieving the relationship. You are grieving the explanation you may never receive. You are grieving the apology that may never come. You are grieving the possibility that they may never understand your experience in the way you wish they would. And that is a real loss.

In therapy, we sometimes have to work toward accepting ambiguity rather than solving it. We can learn to tolerate the fact that some questions may remain unanswered. We can work toward accepting what we know without requiring certainty about everything we do not know.

We can say, I don't know exactly why they did it, but I know how it affected me. We can say, I don't know whether they ever loved me in the way I loved them, but I know what I experienced in the relationship. We can say, I don't know whether they regret what happened, but I know that I do not want to continue living in the aftermath of it.

That is a different kind of closure. It is not closure through their explanation. It is closure through our own understanding.

What We Learn About Love

I have said before that relationships are mirrors. Relationships teach us things about ourselves that cannot be learned in isolation. Our earliest relationships can shape how we understand love, attachment, trust, conflict, responsibility, and belonging. We learn what closeness looks like. We learn what happens when we have needs. We learn whether conflict can be repaired or whether conflict means someone leaves. We learn whether we can say no and still be loved.

Sometimes we carry those lessons into adulthood without realizing that they are lessons.

If we learned that love required sacrifice, we may become very comfortable over-giving. If we learned that being needed was the safest way to maintain connection, we may confuse being useful with being loved. If we learned that people leave when we have needs, we may become exceptionally good at having very few. If we learned that relationships must be preserved at all costs, we may tolerate things that we would never advise someone else to tolerate.

bell hooks wrote about this in All About Love, particularly the way women can be socialized to interpret enduring unkindness or cruelty as evidence of commitment and love. She challenged the idea that saving a relationship should require us to abandon ourselves. That idea matters because sometimes we confuse suffering with devotion. We think that if we keep trying, it means we love them. If we forgive again, it means we love them. If we understand their trauma, it means we love them. If we stay, it means we love them.

But love does not require us to prove how much pain we can tolerate.

There is a difference between commitment and self-abandonment. There is a difference between compassion and over-functioning. There is a difference between understanding someone's wounds and volunteering to be wounded by them.

The Relationship Is Telling You Something

Sometimes we spend years trying to understand someone else's behavior while never stopping to ask whether the relationship is meeting our needs.

We become so focused on why that we lose sight of what.

Why are they like this? Why can't they show up? Why can't they communicate? Why won't they change? Why don't they see what they're doing?

Eventually, we may have to ask a different question: What is this person and relationship showing me?

What is the pattern? What is actually being offered? What am I receiving? What am I repeatedly hoping will change? What am I giving that is not being returned? What am I continuing to tolerate because I am afraid of what it means if I stop?

These questions are not about creating a checklist for relationships or expecting perfection. People are human. Relationships and people are imperfect. There will be misunderstandings, disappointments, missed opportunities, and moments when we fail each other. The question is not whether there will be rupture. The question is what happens after the rupture.

Does the person care that they hurt you? Are they willing to listen? Are they willing to repair? Do their actions change? Or are you repeatedly being asked to understand while they remain unwilling to understand you?

That distinction matters.

For the Moment, For the Ride

Think about taking the train or the bus with friends. Or walking home together after school. For a while, everyone is going in the same direction. You talk, laugh, share stories, make plans, and assume you are all headed home together. Then eventually, the paths begin to separate. One person lives farther away. Someone else gets off at the next stop. Someone turns down a different street. Someone has somewhere else to be. Eventually, everyone has to go their own way.

We understand this when it comes to transportation. We understand that someone getting off the train does not mean the entire ride was meaningless. We understand that someone turning down another street does not mean they were never walking beside us.

But relationships are different.

We often interpret separation as rejection. If someone changes, we wonder what we did wrong. If someone leaves, we question whether we were ever important. If someone does not stay, we may decide that the entire relationship was a lie.

But sometimes two people can share a meaningful part of the journey and still not arrive at the same destination.

The relationship could have been real.

The love could have been real.

The connection could have mattered.

And it can still end.

Not every relationship is designed to last forever. Some people are companions for a season. Some are companions for a particular chapter. Some are there when we are becoming someone new. Some are there when we need to survive something. Some walk beside us for years. And some only travel with us for a few stops.

The goal is not to become detached because people can leave. The goal is to become discerning.

Because not everyone has the same motivation to start and maintain relationships. You may be thinking about forever while they are thinking about right now. You may be thinking about family while they are thinking about convenience. You may be thinking about partnership while they are thinking about companionship. You may be thinking about building something while they are simply enjoying the ride. Sometimes we don't know this until the relationship is tested.

A Birthday, A Year, and Everything I Carried

My birthday is this week, and birthdays have a way of making you look backward and forward at the same time. There is something about reaching another year that makes me pause and take inventory; not just of what happened, but of who I was when it happened, what I carried through it, what I lost, what I learned, and what I am taking with me into the next year.

This has been a year of loss for me, but it has also been a year of growth. Those two things have existed alongside each other, sometimes uncomfortably. I have had to learn that growth does not always look like becoming stronger. Sometimes growth looks like admitting that something hurts, accepting that I cannot fix something, or recognizing that I gave everything I had to give and there simply wasn't anything left.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from giving your all. Not the kind of tiredness that comes from having a busy week, but the kind that comes from trying, hoping, explaining, forgiving, understanding, showing up, and continuing to believe in something even when you are no longer sure it can hold you. Sometimes you reach the end of what you can give, and that realization brings its own grief.

I have had to sit with the reality that sometimes giving your all does not mean the relationship survives. You can communicate, compromise, love, forgive, understand, and try again and still reach a point where there is nothing more you can do. That does not mean you did not try hard enough. Sometimes you tried until you couldn't anymore. And there is a difference.

This year has also reminded me that loss is not limited to death. We lose relationships, versions of ourselves, expectations, the future we imagined, and sometimes the person we thought someone would become. Some losses have names. Others are harder to explain. And sometimes you can be grateful for what you gained while still grieving what you lost.

I have gained perspective. A deeper understanding of myself. More clarity about what I need from the relationships I choose to maintain. A greater appreciation for reciprocity, consistency, honesty, and the people who show up without requiring me to beg them to. Most importantly, I have gained a better understanding of my limits. Our capacity is not infinite. We can love deeply and still have limits. We can care and still have boundaries. We can give generously and still recognize when we are depleted.

And perhaps the hardest lesson has been learning how to navigate new heartbreak while carrying everything else that came before it. Heartbreak does not happen in a vacuum. We bring our histories, fears, hopes, expectations, and previous experiences of being hurt into new relationships and new losses. Sometimes what hurts today is not only what happened today, but everything it reminds us of.

That is part of why relationships can be so complicated. We are never only bringing ourselves into them. We are bringing everything we have already learned about love.

What Do You Have for the Ride?

Maybe this is the question I keep coming back to: What do we actually have in our relationships?

Do we have support? Reciprocity? Respect? Emotional safety? Can we express our needs without being punished for having them? Can conflict be repaired? Can the other person take responsibility? Can we take responsibility? Are we giving more than we can afford to lose because we are hoping the relationship will eventually become something different?

These questions are not about expecting relationships to be perfectly balanced at every moment. There will be seasons when one person needs more support than the other. There will be times when one person carries more. Healthy relationships can hold that.

But there is a difference between temporarily carrying more and permanently carrying the relationship. There is a difference between supporting someone through a difficult season and constantly making excuses for their lack of reciprocity. There is a difference between being understanding and being endlessly understanding at your own expense.

At some point, we have to pay attention to what is actually happening.

Perhaps that is one of the things birthdays give us permission to do: take inventory. Not just of what we lost, but of what we gained. What did the losses teach us? What did they clarify? What did they make room for? What did we learn about what we can survive, what we deserve, and what we no longer want to carry? What are we hoping for?

As I enter another year, that is what I want to remember. I cannot control who stays. I cannot control who leaves. I cannot control whether someone gives me the closure I want. I cannot control whether someone recognizes what I gave or understands what they lost.

But I can decide what I carry.

I can decide what I give.

I can decide what I am willing to lose.

And I can decide that I do not have to lose myself to prove that I loved someone. You may never know everything about why they did what they did. But you can know what the relationship did to you. Sometimes that is enough information to make a different decision.

When the Paths Separate

There will be relationships where you never get the explanation you wanted. People may never acknowledge the impact of their choices, apologize, or give you the version of the story you hoped for. You may never get the closure you thought you needed.

But closure does not always mean getting the final word from someone else. Sometimes it means accepting that you have enough information. I may never understand why you did this, but I understand enough about what happened to know what I need to do next.

And sometimes it means getting off the train. Not because the ride meant nothing, but because the ride is over.

Maybe the relationship was meaningful. Maybe it taught you something. Maybe it gave you something. Maybe it took something from you. Maybe you wish it had been different. Maybe you wish they had stayed. You can hold all of those truths at the same time.

At the end of the ride, perhaps the question is not Why didn't they stay? but While we were traveling together, did I have what I needed? Did I feel seen, respected, cared for? Did I have to abandon myself to maintain the connection?

Not every relationship is meant to take us all the way to the destination. Some people are there for a season, some for a few stops, and some for the entire journey. The work is not to stop caring because people can leave. The work is to stop abandoning yourself because you are afraid they will.

As I enter another year, that is what I want to carry with me: I can love without disappearing into someone else. I can give without giving everything. I can grieve without going backward. And I can recognize when I have given my all and understand that sometimes that is enough. Maybe the goal is not to arrive at the next year untouched. Maybe it is to arrive carrying less of what was never mine to carry in the first place. For the moment. For the ride.

Thank you for reading.

Let’s connect. Email me: moniqueevanstherapy@gmail.com

Accepting individual, couples, and family clients (self-pay and select insurance via headway.co- Monique Evans, LCSW)

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