3 Things I Learnt From A Failed Relationship

Unfortunately, all humans are full of imperfections. That's life. We make different choices each time.

We choose how and when we want to communicate, for instance. We choose how and when to hold back our emotions, for instance. We can make the wrong decisions all the time based on an impatience to see things get done... or we can be extremely slow in making the right decision when attempting to consider all factors.

According to Dr Gary Chapman, humans have at least 5 different love languages. We may choose to express love in one way and receive love in another.

And if those communication frequencies aren't met, friction appears...

1. Communication is key

Unfortunately, given my operating style, I tend to process and ruminate on certain concepts and ideas for a really long time before I can properly express it in words. The silence can be deafening to someone who is impatient in getting an answer, no doubt.

Unfortunately, too, I realised that not all aspects of my communication skills are at the same level. As an educator and a science writer, it is very easy for me to deconstruct various biochemical signalling mechanisms in the body for the layperson. Technical mechanisms can be broken down and analogies used.

However, with emotional matters... I suck at communicating that, period.

And with a highly emotional person, it gets even more tricky. I cannot keep that silence. I need to come out with a half baked thought as reassurance, even if my inner voice tells me that it's incomplete.

Because, otherwise, I will suck at communicating emotional matters with no chance of improvement.

2. One must not be unequally yoked

As a Christian, one of the favourite verses that the older generation would use for dating/marriage advice would be 2 Corinthians 6:14 - "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"

While this verse was used mainly for illustrating to a Christian person why they shouldn't be dating or marrying a non-Christian, I can see how applicable the "unequal yoking" can be in other aspects of the relationship - not just in terms of one's beliefs/value system.

Because what if there was inequality in the communication wavelengths, and both parties refused to work towards overcoming that?

What if there was inequality in the intellectual mindsets of each person? (I personally got quite frustrated with the fact that her mind wasn't built to analyse situations in the way that mine was, to be honest. I was ruminating if it was a dealbreaker or not.)

What if there was inequality, even as Christians, in how we viewed who God was? That was a major dealbreaker for her.

Inequalities can come in many shapes and forms. It all depends on what is ultimately considered a dealbreaker and what isn't.

3. Impatience gets one nowhere.

We do live in an age of instant gratification, where we do want things in the "here" and the "now". We complain when the Internet speeds are slow. We complain when the Ubers are late. We complain when... there's a lot of things to complain about, as long as we want to complain.

While we may be impatient to see results, certain results do take a long time to come to fruition. We may hope to replant trees in the Amazon rainforest to counteract the effects of climate change and all, but trees don't sprout up overnight.

People with children may be impatient and wish that their children grew up faster so that they wouldn't have to deal with all the inconveniences of taking care of babies and toddlers, but babies and toddlers do not hit the puberty streak overnight and turn into adult humans.

In the same way, a relationship that is built on shaky foundations can be easily toppled by impatience. Impatience gets one nowhere.

In a nutshell...

Perhaps the relationship was doomed by the COVID lockdowns (which we termed as the Circuit Breaker in Singapore).

As dating expert Cherlyn Chong commented,

As someone who helps professionals recover from heartbreak, it was unsurprising to me that break-ups, especially that of budding relationships, have been on the rise since the circuit breaker kicked in on Apr 7.

In the free Facebook support group I host, people were lamenting how the pandemic has wrenched them away from potential suitors or newly defined partners.

Despite their best efforts, many of these relationships fell apart after a few weeks, most of the time abruptly.

In the absence of physical touch and activities to do together, new couples living separately resort to video calls, chats and virtual dates to keep the relationship interesting.

But when a relationship isn't stable or defined yet, it’s ill-equipped to deal with the hurdles of time and distance so prematurely. Unlike long-term partnerships where divorce usually happens after years of negativity, nascent relationships tend to end just as quickly as they began.

Of course, the social isolation and "the distance tends to expose the flaws of one or both partners during the 'honeymoon' period" too.

Hence, it could have been doomed by that. It was only 6 months old.

And yes, I was at fault too.

I saw the Circuit Breaker and isolation as a fine time to start building on my Quora, Vocal and Medium readership. I started a website to do an online business.

She was emotionally affected by the Circuit Breaker. I told her I could see where she was coming from but I wasn't sure if there was anything that I could do that could help. She took 2 weeks to grieve, while I was scratching my head and having no clue about why she was feeling that way, but at the same time just plotting to take over the world (like every other INTJ would think of doing).

I was out on the streets legally in between conducting online classes performing "essential services". With the Circuit Breaker rules, only people who were performing essential services were allowed to be out and about. My claim to essential services was having a delivery app that allowed me to take delivery requests, and couriers registered with that app were all classified as essential service workers.

I cherished that ability to get out on the streets to clear my mind and earn a few dollars here and there while maintaining my sanity. It was a pretty cool unfair advantage loophole that I found to have a useful dual purpose during the Circuit Breaker.

She was grieving and I was rejoicing. The communication wavelengths and the mindsets were diametrically opposed.

And that was the end of it after the Circuit Breaker ended.

There's a lot for me to learn out of this, and I'll be doing it all for my own self-improvement. Nobody can claim to be perfect, and neither can I!

Joel Yong, PhD, is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator and a writer. He has authored 1 ebook (which is available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on finding out the fundamentals of biochemical mechanisms in the body that the doctors don’t educate the lay people about, and will then proceed to deconstruct them for your understanding — as an educator should. Do visit his website here to connect.