In middle school, I had a best friend who my mother deemed a bad influence. Twenty years later, I take this to mean that I behaved more like an immature teenage brat while cohorting with this friend. My mom had (has!) a pretty low tolerance for immaturity.

In the same vein, The Conductor had a set of behaviors or habits that I found amazing and endearing, but that felt contrary to stories he told about himself. His explanation was that I alone brought out this unique behavior in him.

It wasn’t until I divorced that I understood what a significant part of our behavior—and quite possibly some long-held beliefs about ourselves—is driven by what is really a specific dynamic between two people.

It seems cliche to say that no two relationships are alike, but for anyone who digs into the reasons why, it can be alarming how much guilt and shame we carry over things that are (or were) intrinsic to the energy and development of the relationship—and will never occur again with another person.

I will never separate from another man for the same reasons that I divorced my husband. And I’ll never be the same kind of wife (for better or worse).

Says George Bernard Shaw: “The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew every time he sees me, while all the rest go on with the old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

Or: You can’t step in the same river twice.

Yet each of us is driven to seek patterns, to create meaning out of chaos, to have cause and effect, to reason and rationalize. How else can we know how to properly act and protect ourselves? To be mature? To save face?

The study of Zen has always been attractive to me because it never presumes. It treasures the no-memory, the ability to have a fresh pair of eyes. Or to be a “new” person as soon as you wish it.

And there is an innocence (some would say naivete) in that approach—but don’t we all crave it? Don’t we all wish to rebirth and recreate—to shed skin when we’ve outgrown it? How often does the world allow for it? How often do we succeed?

Perhaps the people who bring out our best change over time, and/or we love those who bring out our worst. This, I would argue, leads to heartbreak.