Breakup as Triumph

Breakup as Triumph

In February of this year, I went through a breakup from my partner of 3.5 years, who I lived with.

Pause.

Notice what comes up for you when you read that neutral statement.

What thought forms, emotions, or projections appear?

“OMG!!!! Oh no!!!!!!”

“I’m so sorry!!!”

“Why!?!?”

“That sucks.”

“Don’t worry—you’ll find someone else. You’re young and beautiful.”

These are actual responses I’ve heard over the past few months. Not from close people or my family - but mostly actual strangers or people I am in parasocial relation with. 

And it’s made me ask: What the f*ck is going on with our collective relationship to relationships—and especially to endings and beginnings?*

The immediate shock, fear, disapproval, and pity (without inquiry) projected onto the situation when shared  has been striking.

Wait, what?

How do you know it sucks?

You don’t know him, or me, or the situation.

How do you know it wasn’t mutual?

How do you know it wasn’t my choice?

How do you know it’s not what’s best for both of us?

 Why assume I’m worried at all?

How do you know this isn’t the best thing that I’ve ever done for myself in this life to date?

This reflex of pity, shock, and fear revealed something important: we’ve been conditioned to view endings as failures.

But here’s what I believe—beliefs my partner and I shared and lived by in our relationship:

• Any relationship worth having is one that can end at any time.
  
  
• Longevity doesn’t equal success.
  
  
• The purpose of romantic relationship is often to bring awareness to and heal attachment wounds—those deep imprints from childhood when secure love, safety, or consistency weren’t available. They show up as anxious clinging, avoidant distancing, or push-pull dynamics in adulthood. But rarely do those wounds resolve fully within the same container they were activated in.
  
  
• When a relationship is fueled by codependency—the pattern of outsourcing love, safety, or worth to another person, often at the expense of our own needs—true intimacy is blocked. Instead of sovereignty and freedom, we get enmeshment and dependency.
  
  
• The duration of a relationship doesn’t determine its meaning.
  
  
• Staying together for X years doesn’t say anything about my worth or “success.” What matters is Soul alignment, freedom, and living my Dharma.
  
  

And yet — knowing all of this in my bones didn’t make the breakup less painful.

Younger parts of me panicked. They feared what it meant to lose him, what it said about me, what would happen next. Those aspects wanted to preserve the relationship at all costs, because some of their deepest needs were still being met externally.

So yes — it hurt. But from a wider perspective, I could see the Wholeness of it all: the cycle, the lessons, the karmic contract.

And in that seat of Being, I realized: this breakup is not just an ending. It is a triumph.

Why It’s a Triumph

• It is a triumph to have found a partner who shared my ethos around liberation over preservation.
  
  
• It is a triumph to embody that ethos when it mattered most — at the ending.
  
  
• It is a triumph to uncouple with the support of Soul family, without demonizing each other, without sides, without loss of relationship.
  
  
• It is a triumph when the most skillful part of the relationship is the ending itself.
  
  
• It is a triumph to resolve the internal polarity of Victim and Tyrant, and to return to Wholeness.
  
  
• It is a triumph to share this liberation with my ancestors — the grandmothers who couldn’t choose endings — and to feel their grief, rage, joy, and love pouring through me.
  
  
• It is a triumph to break karmic cycles of codependency with someone who signed up to do this work with me before we came here.
  
  
• It is a triumph to meet hidden aspects of my small self and introduce them to Wholeness and Divine Love.
  
  
• It is a triumph to see that this relationship was a vehicle for awakening, impermanent yet complete.
  
  
• It is a triumph to step forward into the next iteration of my Dharma, practice, and life.
  
  

What It Also Was

Triumph does not mean bypass. This ending was also:

• Confronting (shame of not enacting sooner).
  
  
• Painful (grief).
  
  
• Activating (rage and anger).
  
  
• Humbling (seeing how gripping the preservation impulse is).
  
  
• Messy at times (causing harm).
  
  
• Destabilizing (a shared home unraveled, a move on the horizon).
  
  
• Strange and unfamiliar (a whole new life to grow into).
  
  

Triumph and pain are not opposites. They live together.

A Cultural Reframe

I share this because I believe we mishandle endings as a culture.

The way we handle Death in the West is a macrocosm of this epidemic of not knowing how to “do endings.”

And it shows up every day as the way we relate to any ending or change - losing a job, a transition, a move, breakups, divorce, etc.

What’s a small way to begin to shift the narrative around endings?

Let’s start with relating to those who are going through a breakup, divorce, or relational ending or change.

If someone shares that they are going through a relational shift or ending with you - please, PAUSE.

Before projecting.
Before assuming.
Before rushing to make their pain go away.

You don’t need to lead with “I’m sorry,” as if devastation is the only possible experience.

You might instead say:

“Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“Let me know if and how I can support you.”

“I love you.”

Let’s honor endings as much as we honor beginnings.
Let’s stop reifying one over the other.
Let’s love bigger, from Wholeness.
Let’s stop making any of it “wrong.”

Because in truth, every experience is material for Liberation.
Every ending can be a threshold.
Every breakup can, in its own way, be a triumph.

And so it is.