How Only the End Reveals the Truth About Our Partners

A central idea in the psychology of breakups is that there’s a peculiar and paradoxical way in which we can’t really tell who our partner is until, and unless, our relationship with them comes to an end.

Of course, we can know many things about them: how charming they can be, how witty and entertaining they are, what accomplished friends or parents they make. But we aren’t, for that matter, ever being shown the complete picture – for a fundamental reason: they still have a lot to lose. They are our wife or husband, our long-term partner, meant to be with us until death; and therefore, they have a reputation to defend. They rely on our ongoing goodwill and have an incentive to maintain a front.

However, once it’s evident that things really will come to a close – the lawyers are being called in the morning, and the removal van is outside – the bets are off. There is no good name left to defend, the future has vanished, they’re about to become strangers again. Furthermore, there may be fury, a sense of betrayal, grief, pent-up rage, or terror – all ingredients that help one lose command over one’s more diplomatic faculties.

What Endings Reveal

It is now, when it no longer matters, that we stand to gain our most telling glimpse of who we have really been with all these years.

Sometimes – even often – the news is highly sobering. For so long, we took them to be touchingly shy and rather modest. In the closing scenes, we discover that what they are most of all is appallingly immature when it comes to expressing their needs, and willing to cause us immense pain in a bid to evade responsibility.

Or, for so long, we imagined that beneath their steely exterior, they surely had feelings for us. They were well-defended, but not without emotion. And yet, as we discover in the final months, perhaps they truly were without any care. There isn’t a single tear. There are no protests at all. They seem to be plainly and simply glad to see the back of us. Maybe we weren’t hallucinating during the relationship – they just didn’t like us very much.

To think that all along, this was hidden below the surface – and that it took an ending to make it clear.

The Psychology of Breakups: When We Learn the Most

But the news is not always grim. In some cases, we can discover enormous, hope-inducing decency. When they have every chance to exact revenge, they don’t. When they no longer need to be kind, they remain so. Even when it isn’t going to change anything, they work with us to achieve a good ending; they may help us with a health issue or offer us a loan.

The index of a person’s real character is how they behave towards those who are no longer of any use to them.

Hence the wisdom of the saying: we should marry the person we would want to be divorced from. Or: we should want to be with the person who it would be a heartwarming surprise no longer to be with.

We can learn a lot from being with someone – but, as the psychology of breakups suggests, we may learn even more once the relationship is over.