Our Better Endings topic this week is “Relationship Changes”. Relationships are always in flux: adapting, developing, deepening, sometimes dissipating. As we undergo our individual transformations, in relationships we weather or design our cycles in tandem when possible, or not.
How do you orient in your relationships with respect to Better Endings? How do relationships affect, in fact, what you might even define as a better ending in your life?
And They Lived Happily, Ever After!
This fairytale line suggests that stable relationships are an end in themselves, but of course we all know it’s not usually so simple. I love Stephen Sondheim’s comic musical Into the Woods, in which he brings several fairytale stories together but doesn’t end after Act II suggests “happily ever after”. Act III shows what really happens for the characters as life goes on. They face a Giant together and must forge a community and look past their petty grievances in order to survive.
Life happens; people strive to adjust, to adapt, to thrive. Sometimes they work together and their relationship strengthens and endures. Sometimes they grow apart. It’s not necessarily what happens in our relationships that matters for Better Endings but it is how we respond, what we make of our relationships and experience.
Consider Rumi’s excellent advice (our Better Endings Quote today):
“In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improves.” — Rumi
How have you or can you manifest Better Endings with respect to your relationships, of any sort or mode? Write a story, or send your insights to share with the rest of us.
Related articles
- What is love? (wrongfortuneteller.wordpress.com)
- Other fish in the puddle: relationships, compromise, and being alone (asexualagenda.wordpress.com)
- The Art of Compromise (xolovemishaxo.wordpress.com)
Better Endings 