In a brief conversation about relationships last night I caught onto an interesting idea. It was about how to know when a relationship is over – in reference to longer term relationships, or more serious relationships. — >You should continue to be in a relationship if you feel like the person you’re with is someone you would want to marry. If you start to question whether or not that person is someone you could or would want to marry, that’s why you know it’s going to end.

Obviously two things come to mind. The first being that I never wanted to get married in any traditional sense. The second being that not all relationships end in marriage and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t important or special. But thinking about it a little bit further I started to appreciate the sentiment.

People have asked me before: When do you know how to end a relationship? Especially if you really care about someone?

Is this one way to do that?

While I do know that life is tricky and sometimes things end – I never talk about my relationship as being temporary. I don’t think about it as having a finishing date. I don’t say “Well, I know this won’t be my last relationship” because the thought of being with someone else is foreign to me. And I think there’s a difference between acknowledging that relationships fail and being cognizant of the fact that this one just isn’t for you. Does that make sense?

You can certainly keep on in a relationship that you’ve acknowledged isn’t for you. Sometimes those relationships are fun, and you continue to share a bond. But at a certain point there is that switch where you realize that if this relationship truly isn’t for you, you might be leading someone on who feels differently. It’s not black and white, and there’s not always a right thing to do.

But the idea of staying in a relationship if you can’t see that person in your future, if you don’t want to see them in your future, whatever that future is to you… at a certain point in dating, I don’t think it’s fair.

What about you?