On Exit Interviews

In the world of Human Resources, you usually have a sit-down interview with your departing employees to find out why they're leaving.

You ask them about how their needs were or weren't met, determine whether there was a breakdown somewhere along the way, and basically give them an opportunity to give very frank 'feedback' about the dissolution of the relationship. The idea is, I guess, that since they don't have to be there anymore, that they'll be brutally honest and that you'll gain insight on how not to make the same mistakes again.

When one is in love and that love ends, and one is struggling through the painful haze of rejection, there is, at times, an overwhelming urge to find out just why that person tendered their resignation.

I wonder, when it comes to finding out what exactly happened...

...do we ever really want to know?

Sometimes knowledge means power. Sometimes an ex will tell someone, who tells you, that he's still not quite over you. Sometimes you'll find out from an old coworker that the person who took over your job never connected with people the way you used to. And sometimes a friend will tell you that the reason you fell out of touch was because they just absorbed in a new relationship and that they sure do miss those times you used to clink Cosmopolitans and discuss what to do when the bill sits too long on the table on a first date.

But when the emotional stakes are as high as they are after a breakup, is it ever a good idea to get the pure, unvarnished, and sometimes splintery truth?

Certainly there is a temptation to think that there might have been a simple equation that we just missed in the delicate dance of finding the right person in the big, mean city. That there was a simple need there that we didn't meet, some misstep along the way that could be rectified by a simple and heartfelt conversation over a bottle of very good Shiraz. That if we could only figure out the fatal flaw, that we could resolve everything and go back to sharing overpriced dinners and underclarified relationship status. Or if it couldn't recover, that at least we wouldn't risk another relationship with our clinginess, distance, or other imagined failings.

But I guess that assumes that we're able to work on ourselves in love the same way we do in our jobs, and I suspect it might be a little more tricky than that. After all, I know that I've myself initiated breakups for some pretty capricious reasons. But it wasn't so much about the person themselves as where I was, or what I thought I wanted at the time. I've broken things off because they never wanted to have "the talk" and with others for being too clingy. I once broke up with someone because he was a 'loose kisser'; another time I decided that I had to break things off because the man in question didn't support women in the military, and I figured that meant my future would necessarily include humping TV dinners and twist cap domestic beer out to the rec room every night of our married life. Another girlfriend of mine broke up with someone because he insisted on wearing a down vest with everything to regulate his body temperature, and to her, it symbolized a fundamental incapacity to deal with life's challenges.

The thing is, there wouldn't have been anything that they could have done. It wasn't really about face tautness or feminist repression or inappropriate outerwear choices. Those were cosmetic reasons that were much easier to explain than tackling the more challenging notion of "they're just not the one." Our paths not taken are inevitably someone else's down-filled Romeo, so perhaps it's best to let sleeping vests lie.

And another compelling reason for leaving the rocks unturned might be to preserve our hopes, at least for that tender stage when you're bursting into tears at the sight of the extra toothbrush in your bathroom. I think most of us have looked back on a romance long abandoned, for reasons known only to us at the time, and wondered what might have been. For a moment, we miss the way their cologne used to smell, or the way they heard us tell the same story at a party three times and never said a word, or the way they used to let us curl up into the nook of their arm until we feel asleep even when they were lying awake semi-paralyzed. It's comforting to think that the people who broke our hearts might be falling asleep somewhere, possibly with a photo of someone new on their nightstand, but thinking about how cute it was that we used to pretend to be asleep on the couch when they got home late just for the sheer pleasure of getting carried to bed. I'd love to think that.

Despite our deepest impulses, our dark and insatiable urge to know the real story, the truth is that sometimes there isn't something that we could have put our finger on and fixed. We may call our weaknesses "areas for opportunity" in the workplace, but in the realm of the heart, a performance review may never be the path to enlightenment. So I say forgo the exit interview. We may not be great analysts, or time managers, or team players, but we are all great at being brave enough to love again after being left.

Knowledge may give us bargaining power, but trust gives us resilience, and that will hold us in good stead even when the deal goes bad. And our memories, I think, no matter how fallible, are just too precious to ever negotiate with.



For my very brave, very best friend, K, who is still looking for that puffy vest that fits her just right.