I see couples who separate after sharing part of their lives. Sometimes they have young children, a home and plans that seemed important. From the outside, I cannot see a reason that seems proportionate to the break, and I find myself thinking that they have left at the first little upset: some strain, a disappointment, a season when being together is no longer as easy as it was at the beginning.
I know that what I see is not the whole story. A separation that seems sudden to others may have been preceded by years of loneliness, unanswered requests and attempts that nobody else knows about. I cannot judge an entire relationship by the fragments that reach me. Yet one question stays with me: before giving up on a love, how willing have we been to care for it?
It does not trouble me when someone builds a new life after a relationship has ended badly. On the contrary, I am glad when they find peace, affection and trust again. What unsettles me is something else: the possibility that, sometimes, we prepare to start again elsewhere before we have truly tried to repair what we already have.
When being together stops being easy
At the beginning, a relationship seems to move forward by itself. We seek each other out, share our stories and want to make room for the other person. Then come habits, work and tiredness. Children may bring interrupted nights, less time as a couple and new responsibilities. We discover that the person we love has faults that do not disappear simply because we love them.
At such times, we may begin to wonder whether we have chosen the wrong person. Sometimes that is a necessary question. At other times, however, we are asking a lasting relationship to offer us the lightness of those first meetings forever. We compare our home, with its dishes to wash and its worries, with an imagined love that we have not yet asked to carry any burdens.
Not everything that feels heavy proves that love has ended. There are seasons when our feelings need actions to sustain them: rest that both partners can enjoy, attention, a conversation postponed for too long. If we stay together only while it is easy, our promise lasts no longer than favourable circumstances.
The promise, with or without a ceremony
For me, marriage retains a particular value. Publicly saying “I choose you” means accepting a commitment intended to reach beyond today's mood. I do not believe that a ceremony makes people faithful by magic; I believe that a solemn promise deserves to be made seriously and remembered when keeping it asks something of us.
That is why I find myself reflecting on people who do not wish to marry but choose to have children. Not because an unmarried family is worth less: there are unmarried couples capable of profound devotion, and marriages in which the promise is betrayed every day. What troubles me is the possible idea of avoiding a lasting commitment while making a choice that will affect another person's life forever.
I do not know what motivates each couple, and I do not attribute that idea to everyone. But the point remains, for me: having a child is not a lighter commitment because there is no signature. The bond between the parents may change; their responsibility towards that child does not end with their love story.
Faithfulness begins before temptation
When I speak of faithfulness, I certainly mean not cheating. I mean respecting what we have agreed and the trust with which another person places part of their life in our hands. I do not regard an affair as a merely inevitable consequence of boredom or a crisis. Difficulty may explain vulnerability; it does not cancel responsibility for our choices.
But faithfulness is more than the absence of another relationship. It also concerns how we care for our bond: whether we tell the truth about what we miss, whether we still seek opportunities for closeness, whether we stop treating our partner as someone whose presence can be taken for granted. It also asks us to notice the secret intimacies we choose to encourage while, at home, we give up trying to talk.
If the relationship is in trouble, I would hope that our first attempt would be to face it honestly. Saying “I am unhappy”, “I feel alone” or “I no longer know how to reach you” is difficult. But it allows the other person to know the truth and respond. A secret relationship denies them that opportunity while continuing to ask for their trust.
Someone who has been betrayed does not have to prove their love by forgiving. Rebuilding can be a choice, if both people want it, but it requires truth and concrete changes. It is not enough for the person who caused the hurt to want to turn the page: the person who was hurt must also be free to decide.
What it means to truly try
Trying does not mean repeating “we should be happier” while leaving everything unchanged. It means asking what part of the difficulty may also depend on us. Perhaps the other person keeps asking for help and we call it complaining. Perhaps we have allowed work, hobbies or our phones to receive attention that our relationship no longer gets. Perhaps we answer every criticism by preparing our defence, without listening to what is being asked of us.
An effort becomes credible when it enters our days: truly sharing responsibilities, protecting some time together, honouring an agreement, apologising without immediately adding an accusation. And, when we both want it, accepting skilled help to discuss what we keep turning into arguments on our own.
It is not enough, however, for one person to do the work of two. To someone who says “you must make an effort to stay”, I would also ask: “what are you doing to make it possible to be happy with you?”. The wish to save a relationship cannot become one person's permanent assignment.
Children are not a chain, but they matter
I would never want a child to feel that they are the reason their parents have condemned themselves to unhappiness. Children must not hold adults together, judge their conflicts or persuade them to love each other. That work does not belong to them.
Yet we cannot treat them as a minor detail in our decisions. If we choose to build a family, our freedom must also take account of the needs of those who depend on us. Before separating, what we can still change deserves sincere attention; if we do separate, that same attention must accompany what comes afterwards.
A new romantic life does not release us from the life of parenthood we have already begun. There are still commitments to honour, presence, listening and daily care. As far as it is possible and safe, there is also a responsibility not to draw our children into a war against their other parent. For them, the end of the couple should not become the disappearance of a father or a mother.
What other people cannot see
I return, then, to my phrase “without an apparent reason”. The important word is apparent. A reason may exist even if I do not know it. Some people seem to leave over something trivial when they are actually making a final decision after many ignored requests. It would be unfair to call every separation frivolous simply because we did not witness the struggle behind it.
My reflection is not intended to put those who left on trial. It is meant to ask a question of those who, within their own story, still have a choice: am I recognising a real limit, or avoiding an effort I do not feel like making? These are questions to ask ourselves honestly first, not verdicts to hand out to others.
Staying does not mean enduring harm
Violence, threats, controlling behaviour and repeated humiliation are not the normal price of lasting love. No promise requires someone to remain in danger or prove that they have tried hard enough before protecting themselves. In a harmful situation, safety comes first, not confrontation at any cost or saving the relationship.
Some relationships also end without either person being a monster: incompatible plans, lost trust, sincere attempts that have not opened a way forward. Not every love can be recovered. Recognising that respectfully is different from treating every difficulty as sufficient reason to look for someone else immediately.
What I would like to tell my children
My children, I do not wish you to remain prisoners of a wrong choice. I wish you a love in which you can be free, respected and present. But I also hope you become people capable of protecting that good when it no longer comes without effort.
Do not demand a partner without faults, and do not use your own faults as an excuse not to change. Before concluding that love is missing, ask yourselves whether you have given it time, honest words and acts of care. Do not wait until the other person announces that they are leaving before you begin to listen.
If a relationship ends, I hope you can begin again without shame. But while a good possibility remains, one that you both want, I would like you to give it a real chance. To me, faithfulness includes this: not handing the first wave of tiredness the power to decide the value of what we have built.
I am not asking you to stay at any cost. I am asking you not to walk away lightly, as though a promise, another person’s trust and a family did not first deserve your best effort.