Understanding Intentions - Ethics Essay

Understanding Intentions - Ethics Essay
People are important in personal interactions, yet sometimes they can overstep their bounds and present a negative impact. While this is never desirable in life it happens nonetheless. This proved the case for me a few years ago in a relationship that I was having with a young woman. The relationship had gotten off course after its third year and because of this diversion the young lady was beginning to negatively impact my life. I was devoting far too much time in trying to right the wrongs that we were having and was neglecting my family and friends. I was also getting fed up with the way things were working and was subconsciously being mean to the other member of the relationship.
This bothered me the most as I am not a mean spirited person but I was acting as such and was unable to control my actions. It was terrible the way things worked out, as they had not begun in any manner that was intended to end in such a way. But I was able to learn from this experience in a way that would prove helpful in the future.
The intentions of the young lady were probably nothing but genuine in nature but turned into something more. This was an example of a problem that rises up from nowhere and eventually gets bigger: almost too big too handle and eventually blows up in your face. So despite beginning with the best of intentions, the circumstances just were not meant to fit together and we reached a point in which our relationship was helpless and thus coming to an end. This proved frustrating for us both as we assumed that the effort we had put in would be enough to carry on. Unfortunately this was not the case.
When looking deeper into both the situation and the intentions that both the young lady and myself had it is intriguing in that I found there was very little that could have been done. I have often tried to imagine what other steps could have been taken in order to have reached a different end. Each time I do this I come up empty. Sometimes things in life do not work out and relationships are no exception. Ours was a case in which the best of intentions, actions, or emotions merely prolonged our being together and led to no other greater good for us. If they did anything, they caused us to hang on to hope for longer than we should have, which ended up costing us both time and energy.
I know that I made contributions to our cause and while I like to think that they were all good, I am not naïve enough to accept this as total truth. We were both guilty of doing things that helped collapse our relationship. It was disheartening that I became estranged from those that are closest to me and I began to act in a manner unsuitable for myself because of my own relationship problems. Still I feel that this situation was necessary in developing my own personal methods of dealing with difficult situations and negative perceptions in my life. I think that having to deal with this problem in such a personal situation has helped me develop a framework for dealing with the people and problems that may affect me negatively in the future.