Is There a Point of No Return?

Reader question, from Sad Girl in PV:

“Is there a point of no return, when the relationship can no longer be fixed and one just has to let go?”

—

Firstly, thank you for your question. This is a place so many people believe and feel they get to, and the question is never asked lightly. The weight of the question is always carried for a long time before ever asked out loud.

My honest answer is actually “No.” There is not a true point of no return, because way too often this wall people often talk about hitting is reached inside of relationships that do not truly have strong constitutions, creeds, and/or agreements that support the relationship in the first place.

Most couples are not standing in a failed relationship. They are trying to “fix” or navigate through a relationship that has been generally created from society’s assumptions and rules that do not leave much room for true authenticity. Our relationships are designed for our growth, and love is the incredible juicy benefit. But we have a culture that flips it and has us believe that “love will get us through,” without relationship skill-building to get us through.

The parts that never get heard

When two people come together, they bring absolutely everything with them. Their history, their wounds, all of their hopes, and desires, and that is the entire point. The relationship with all of this inside is the soil for our growth. Yet for the most part, who we are at the core has no place to be safely heard or soothed. Not the animal in us, which is the raw, primal, fight-or-flight part that feels everything, and not the ego, the part that protects, defends, builds stories, and knuckles down to be right. The point of no return has been edged toward for years, because neither of those parts ever gets a safe space to be truly heard or soothed, so instead each argument is a battle of perspectives.

What I see continuously is that both people inside of a relationship are managing and modulating themselves, for years. Withholding authenticity, softening the edges and swallowing what feels too risky to say. So many relationships become a performance of the version of ourselves that keeps the peace in order to maintain connection and to avoid the conflict and rupture, until it leaks out. Instead of a place where love is growing in safety, it becomes a relationship between two carefully edited people that kind of dig or hint their grievances in hope of change.

We build everything but the relationship

Many spend years investing in business skills, academic qualifications, a larger house, nicer cars and their children’s future, pouring all resources into what the relationship builds on the outside, and almost nothing into the relationship itself. I rarely meet couples who have created their own relationship agreements: a constitution, a creed, a safe container for the constant shifts of two changing people. And I rarely meet couples who devote dedicated time to the improvement of communication, touch, or emotional-intelligence skills week over week, year over year. They will have business meetings each week with their staff, go to their children’s sports games, yet not have a weekly clearing date or a three-hour intimacy date every single week with the person with whom they created all this.

So when the breaking point comes, people look at each other across the rubble and say, “We are past the point of no return.” But what they are actually standing in is the consequence of years of unwitnessed parts, swept-under-the-carpet feelings, and unspoken truths.

The truth no one prepares us for

And there is an uncomfortable piece we are almost never made aware of, because it does not fit the narrative of the recent romantic love marriage structure, and that is we “fall out of romantic love.” Our hormones lead us there, given the way we have been asked to live inside relationships. It is not evidence that you chose wrong, or that something is broken beyond repair. But our very recent, romanticized model of what a relationship should look like leaves us completely unprepared for this moment, so when it happens, most people have only one script available to them. And that script is to leave.

One person, a whole village

Because our modern model asks one single human to be everything: lover, best friend, confidant, co-parent, financial partner, therapist, cheerleader, safe place, adventure, stability, passion, spiritual advisor, and peace. Every need that was once held and nourished across an entire village of elders, community, ceremony and friendships, we have collapsed onto the shoulders of one person, and then we wonder why it all buckles. The exhaustion of this is one of the most universally felt and least spoken truths inside modern relationships. And the cruelest part is that the one person you often feel uneasy saying it to is the one you come home to every night.

Where the work begins

So, before anyone decides it is over, there is work to do first. Not conflict-resolution scripts or bypassing straight to your “higher self,” to be the better person, but to a safe place where the animal and the ego can be heard, witnessed and soothed, or they will keep running the show regardless. What I invite couples to do, especially those standing at what feels like the edge, is to reverse-engineer their relating: build real agreements where every part of each person gets to be heard, fully, without the other taking it personally. Where the animal gets its voice, the ego is witnessed, and the wound finally gets the soothing it’s been screaming for underneath every argument and every cold silence. Because these wounds, the fear, and the beliefs that run your heart and go around and around in your mind are what you brought into the relationship, which is bringing them to the surface to be worked through. This is the point of the relationship. This is the place for true authenticity, instead of the battle of perspectives. Then comes the processing, ownership and gratitude. When two people are inside of these agreements and experience this place that brings freedom, the intimacy tends to return naturally, often stronger than before.

So, the real question was not “Is it too late?”

It’s “Have we ever actually been able to fully show up, authentically, inside this relationship?” Did we create our own relationship agreements, or did we just follow an unexamined script?

For most couples, the answer is no. Which means the relationship they think they are leaving was never really given the chance to exist.

That’s where I begin.

— Melissa Louise

Where to Find Me

I bring this work into my practice here in Puerto Vallarta, one-on-one and in small groups. Book your discovery call to speak more on how this can work for you.

Ask Me Anything

You write in, I answer, and we skip the part where either of us pretends you don’t actually want to know.

I’m Melissa Louise, certified Erotic Blueprint and UPLVL Communication™ Coach, and I’ve spent years sitting across from real people with real questions about sex, intimacy, and the relationships that hold them together, or don’t. Nothing is too much or too small. If it’s true for you, it’s fair game here.

Send me your questions. I’ll bring the honesty whilst you bring the courage to ask.

Always with Pleasure,
M

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