Relationship Exit Interviews

Has a relationship ever ended and you wondered why? What did you do that made for failure? Or did you ever really want to rationally sit down and discuss your own feelings without feeling like you had to be angry to do it? I googled and there were tons of entries for exit interviews in relationships. Rachel Greenwald, a dating coach, was a sensible place to start.

Interestingly enough, Mad Science and I had a mutual interview at the beginning of our formal relationship but that is a different blog post. So here are my exit interview questions, and just to make it interesting I will post what my answers would have been in my first big relationship.

1. What is your primary reason for leaving? Our methods are so different when it comes to communication, how needs are met, and the power dynamic it is no longer comfortable for me and after having done everything I knew to do then with no resolution in sight, felt it better for you and the kids, if I removed myself as part of the problem.

2. Did anything trigger your decision to leave? Your decision to remain in a closed relationship though neither one of us was really getting our needs met.

3. What was most satisfying about our relationship? The part before we were married. I think as a friend, you were generous and considerate but as a husband not as much.

4. What was least satisfying about our relationship? The fact that once married I had no right to make any rational input into how things were going to be done and often felt like my needs weren't important.

5. What would you change about your role in relationship? I would have liked to have had a more equal part in things. I would have liked to have been the sort of person you felt you could trust to talk to once we were married, and I wish I had gotten medical help earlier in the relationship.

6. Where your expectations understood when and if you communicated them? Did my response to your needs turn out to be as you expected? I did not feel my expectations were met or even really considered in this relationship. As for responding to my needs you did what you thought was most useful based on emotional behaviors but it had the feeling of being a measure to simply make me less inconvenient to you rather than actually meeting the need with any level of understanding. In short rather than asking me what I needed you assumed what that was and did it with varying results.

7. Did you receive enough communication to exercise your role effectively? Not really. I often felt like I had let you down and as you slowly took away "my role" I felt lost and ineffective in the relationship. I often wondered if it would have improved if I had gotten a job and let you stay home and take care of the kids and house.
 

8. Did you receive adequate support to explore your part in the relationship? No, it seemed there was only one way, in which, you were prepared to deal with me which left no room for experimentation or exploration. When we met you had an established household, your cleaning and cooking standards where different than mine, you had little sympathy for the trauma of my recent past and gave me little support to change.

9. Did you receive sufficient feedback about your performance sexually, mentally, and emotionally? No. Criticism, yes but honest feedback with ways I could improve, not really.

10. Did this experience help you to pinpoint your relationship goals? Absolutely. Upon realizing I had so much work to do on myself, I discovered I needed someone I wasn't afraid to talk to, someone who would be flexible and conscious of their behavior enough for us to grow together.

11. What would you improve to make our relationship better? Our listening and communication skills. A loss of preconceived notions about roles in relationship and a willingness to work together instead of against each other.

12. Did any of my personal hangups, or methods (or any other obstacles) make the relationship more difficult? I felt you were so hung up in your secret self loathing that you couldn't see anyone or any needs but your own. I offered many options in an effort to make it better but when everything is my fault and there is only your way to fix it, no headway can be made. I freely admit much guilt in the relationship but it's never just one person who contributes to the fall.

13. Would you consider a relationship again or in another capacity such as friendship, friends with benefits or casual sex  in the future? No. Being civil to me when I visit the kids would be nice but I don't really want a relationship with you.

14. How do you generally feel about this relationship? I felt that, as a transitional experience, it was good for me in a number of ways. It showed me that I had a lot of work to do regarding healing and self awareness. It helped me determine what I really wanted in a relationship, as well as what I really didn't want.

15. What does your new relationship offer that this one didn't? Space, empathy, feedback without it being criticism of my nature. Conscious choice of traditional roles arrived at through discussion and choice rather than unspoken rules about how I should act or behave. My current relationship is egalitarian and flexible even though we operate within some traditional division of labor roles.

Thinking about these answers has actually been somewhat therapeutic because this relationship had very little in the way of informed closure. Incidentally, this is similar to the relationship review process we have implemented bi yearly. These are all good questions to stay on top of for retention. I don't anticipate a break up any time soon but I think I would be open to hearing the answers to these questions and answering them for myself. I've also done this with other relationships and those answers led me to better self care, less codependency and clearer communication including listening with more detachment and empathy.

I approach disagreement more from the place of service to the relationship, rather than with blame and manipulation to get my way. Another interesting use of this exercise has been that if I journal my answers to each failed relationship (friendship, family, intimate or business) I can often see a pattern of behavior or expectation on my part that needs to change. Acceptance has been huge for me. Can I accept that no matter how understanding and honest I am there are people in the world who simply aren't there? And can I accept that I don't have to have relationships with those people? Just as I don't believe there is only one compatible person to have any kind of relationship with me I don't believe there is a need to be in relationship with just everyone. That doesn't give me license to be unpleasant or unkind to someone but it does mean that I don't have to get my feelings hurt when I behave as kindly as I can and am met with useless behavior from another person.