5.5 - Try everything, then let go, then try again

Relationships go through hard periods. Sometimes very hard. Sometimes long. The temptation in those periods is to either grip harder (try to fix, control, make the other person change) or check out (give up, withdraw, start fantasizing about being somewhere else).

A more useful orientation: try everything. Then let go. Then try again.

Try everything means: actually try things. Read the books. Have the conversations. Look at your part. Apologize when you should. Hold your ground when you should. Try new patterns. Show up differently. Don't just sit in the same dynamic complaining about it.

Let go means: at some point, you've done what you can do, and the rest is not in your hands. The other person is a free agent. They will do what they do. Whether the relationship works is not entirely up to you. In any sincere effort, a moment comes when the gripping stops helping, and the only move left is to release the outcome.

Then try again means: don't confuse letting go with leaving. Letting go of the outcome is internal. It doesn't necessarily mean walking out (even though sometimes it could). After the release, often what becomes possible is a fresh attempt, from a different state, without the desperate grip that was contaminating everything.

Most relationships that endure go through this cycle many times. The couples who go the distance are the ones who try, let go, try again, and let go again, for years.

The relationships that fail prematurely usually fail because one or both people stopped trying too soon, or because they kept trying without ever letting go of the outcome, which produces a kind of grasping that destroys what it's trying to preserve.