It's never easy letting go.

[AmysPureRomance]

I must vehemently disagree with Mr. Shakespeare when he said that "parting is such sweet sorrow." I realize that I am taking his poetic wording out of context, but my point is well-made, when I say that "letting go" is more difficult than bittersweet.

A "relationship", as worded in the question means that you have "related" with someone on a deeper level. Adding the word "ship", to the end of an adjective ("relation-ship", "friend-ship", "partner-ship", etc) cannotates that there was an even deeper connection to a person than the average acquantaince.

But how do we know when that friend "ship" is about to sail away? As humans, the signs are generally there long before we'll admit that it's time to let go. But we hold on, don't we? We squeeze a little tighter, make subtle changes, make excuses, and make those little extra efforts before we finally let go.

It's curious.

Animals don't do this. Dogs never "pretend" to like us. When a dog likes you, you know it. When he doesn't like you, you know it. Yet humans will pretend to like us long after they've started holding grudges against us.

It is an incredible emotional pain, for us humans, to lose someone whom we care about. For whatever reason, we live in a world of fantasy; even when we are being abused, we think about the "good times" with a person, and have difficulty letting go of them, simply because we think about what was "happy" when we were with them. Of how it "could" be, "if only".

So, to give real, definite signs of when it is time to "let go" of that "ship", is difficult, and yet, it is quite simple:

When being with a person nearly always causes us more pain than happiness, it is time to let go. Not only for your own sake, but for the other passenger on your relation-ship, too.