Divorce: Reaching the End of Your Success

"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew."

This is the opening line of a poem by Jack Gilbert entitled, Failing and Falling. You might remember Icarus from Greek mythology. He and his father Dedulus were trapped in a labyrinth and Dedulus made wings of wax that Icarus could use to fly away. His parting warning to his son was that he be careful and not fly too high towards the sun. Once he started flying Icarus felt free and emboldened and, not paying attention, did indeed fly too close to the sun. The wings of wax melted and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. The moral of this myth usually is about recklessness or stupidity, or not following the advice of your elders.

But we've all been like Icarus. When we look back at mistakes we've made in the past they too seem like glaring and foolhardy examples of stupidity, impulse, and poor judgment. We kick ourselves for our lack of foresight, for not slowing down and being more cautious, for letting our emotions push our reason into the corner. When we tally them up, the catalog of failures can leave us feeling that our lives are more half-empty than half-full.

This is particularly true with relationships, as the rest of this poem describes. Like Icarus, we start out with a sense of excitement and passion, with the best of intentions and visions of success, but then we lose sight of where we are heading. The arguments, the biting of the tongue; the attack, the withdrawal pull and distract us. The once-firm start begins to crumble. The car that is the relationship begins to veer ever so slightly off the road, so slightly that we scarcely notice. But suddenly one day we find ourselves sitting in a ditch, unable to get out. The relationship ends and we wonder how we got there, while those around us shake their head full of hindsight wisdom:

"And people said they knew it was a mistake, that everybody / said it would never work."

But the another way of looking at relationships and failures is to not see them as failures at all. Yes, the intentions were sound, the judgment good. Yes, there are always mistakes to find; there are regrets that remain and sting. But the problem was not stupidity or laziness or anything else our critical mind feeds us. The end of the relationship occurred because each of us had changed and grown, and we had only changed and grown because of the support we were able to give each other.

"How can they say a marriage failed...
Icarus was not failing as he fell
but just coming to the end of his triumph."

Appreciate your triumphs.