When a relationship ends, you begin to think of all the negative things about that person--how they talked too much or not enough, how they could be insensitive or unmotivated--whatever the case may be. Sometimes this is a coping mechanism that helps you deal with the loss, and other times it's merely clarity. If it's the clarity you seek, you must gain distance. You have to step away from an issue to truly see it. If you're glued to the side of something, you really have no idea what the other side of it looks like. But if you can manage to rip yourself apart from it, you might sacrifice a bit of skin, but the new skin you grow will be thicker and more resilient--more capable of suffering (as Shakespeare would say)the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... or the loss of a relationship.

Yet, is it really a loss, if your newfound clarity tells you about your myopia? Isn't it more a gain, that you learned from it, that you experienced it fully, and perhaps with the blissful ignorance that sometimes goes hand in hand with loving someone? This is a question we must ask of ourselves when we encounter a conflict with another person. Hopefully we will also never allow ourselves to make the same mistakes while expecting different results.

In the end, the best we can hope for is that we bring something away from that relationship which serves us in some beneficial way later on. The foolish among us will dismiss the experience as a waste of time. The wise among us will embrace the opportunity to have learned something new about the world, the people in it, and ourselves.