Some Relationships Don’t End. They Go Bankrupt.

Some relationships do not end because of one big betrayal. They end because the account was overdrawn long before anyone admitted it.

Some relationships do not end because of one big betrayal.

They end because the account was overdrawn long before anyone admitted it.

In college, I took a speech class that became one of the most pivotal classes of my college career. Not because it taught me how to speak in front of people, though it did. But because it gave me a framework that changed the way I looked at relationships.

For one of our assignments, we had to discuss the concept of the emotional piggy bank.

Before that class, I had never heard of it. But once I understood it, I could not unsee it.

The emotional piggy bank is a way of looking at relationships as emotional accounts. Not just romantic relationships, but all relationships. Friendships. Family relationships. Work relationships. Any meaningful connection between two people.

And like any account, there are deposits and withdrawals.

A deposit is anything that adds value to the relationship.

Trust. Effort. Communication. Thoughtfulness. Showing up. Keeping your word. Listening. Being present. Remembering what matters to someone. Being there when life gets heavy.

A withdrawal is anything that takes away from the relationship.

Broken promises. Neglect. Disrespect. Ignoring someone. Failing to communicate. Betrayal. Infidelity. Repeated disappointment. Making someone feel like they no longer matter.

Some withdrawals are small.

You miss a lunch date. You forget to call back. You show up late without saying anything. You forget a birthday. You become unavailable when someone expected you to be present.

Those things may hurt, but they may not be enough to close the account.

Then there are larger withdrawals.

Cheating. Physical altercations. Deep disrespect. Violating someone’s trust. Disrespecting someone’s family. Saying something that cannot easily be taken back.

Those withdrawals can be large enough to close the account completely.

Since learning that concept, I have found myself viewing relationships through that lens.

Where am I making deposits?

Where am I making withdrawals?

Am I adding to this relationship, or am I slowly draining it?

Is this person making deposits into me, or am I the only one trying to keep the account open?

That framework has helped me understand relationships more clearly. But it has also forced me to look at myself more honestly.

Because some withdrawals are obvious.

Others are not.

Sometimes you do not realize you are making a withdrawal while you are making it.

You may think you are protecting your peace. Creating space. Setting a boundary. Growing up. Moving in a different direction. Becoming your own person.

And sometimes you are.

But to the other person, it may still feel like distance.

It may still feel like absence.

It may still feel like a withdrawal.

One relationship that comes to mind is with one of my best friends.

We met in kindergarten and stayed close all throughout school. We were not just casual friends. We had years of history, shared experiences, and even some traumatic moments that tightened our bond.

In high school, during our junior year, I got a call from him that I still remember clearly.

It was storming outside. The day was dark and gloomy. He called me sounding frantic, repeating the same words over and over again.

“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him.”

I was confused at first.

I told him to slow down and asked him what was going on.

He mentioned his stepfather’s name and said he was sick of him. He was angry. He was hurt. He was at a breaking point.

I told him, “Wait right there. I’m coming.”

At the time, I was still in high school. I did not have a driver’s license. But I did not even stop to ask my mother. I grabbed the car keys and headed for the door.

My mother saw me and immediately knew something was wrong. She asked me what I was doing. I told her my best friend needed my help.

Then the phone rang again.

My mother answered it. It was his mother, asking to speak to me. My mother put the phone on speaker so we could both hear.

His mother said, “Frank, please come get him. It’s crazy over here.”

I told her, “No problem. I’m on my way.”

My mother looked at me and said, “I’m going with you.”

We got in the car and drove to his house. He only lived about fifteen minutes away.

When we got there, he was sitting on the porch with a bat.

He was visibly upset. Angry. Hurt. Tearing up.

Apparently, he and his stepfather had gotten into an argument. Words were exchanged. Some things were said that cut deep. The situation had gone left quickly.

I told him to put the bat down and grab some clothes.

He could come stay with me.

At first, the thought was that he would stay for a couple of days until cooler heads prevailed. But at home, it was just me and my mother in a three-bedroom house. We had the space. He had already stayed over before and usually slept in the extra bedroom anyway.

After a few days, it felt natural.

He had been my friend for so long that having him there felt like having a brother in the house again. My older brother had already gotten married and moved out, so there was room in the home and room in the family.

Eventually, it became, “Why not just stay here for the year?”

He was excited about the idea. My mother was all for it. She loved him like a son.

So he stayed.

For about a year, we lived like brothers.

That was a major deposit into the account. Maybe one of the biggest deposits a friendship can have.

We were not just talking every now and then. We were sharing space. Sharing a home. Sharing life.

So to go from that to not speaking for years is difficult to explain.

For a long time, I could not point to the moment the account closed.

There was no dramatic ending that I can remember. No single argument that explains everything. No clean transaction I can point to and say, “That was it. That was the withdrawal that emptied the account.”

But when I look back now, I can see the subtle changes.

After we graduated from high school, our lives started to diverge. We began becoming different versions of ourselves.

He started drinking and smoking more. Not in a way that made him a bad person. A lot of young adults experiment. A lot of people find different ways to cope, especially when they are carrying things they may not know how to talk about.

But I was not one of those people.

I did not drink. I did not smoke. And to be honest, I was probably a bit prudish about it.

I made it clear to my friends that I did not want to be around certain things. I did not want to participate. I did not want to be in those environments.

At the time, I saw that as me making a personal choice.

And maybe it was.

But looking back, I can also see how that may have been one of the first withdrawals from our friendship.

Because while he may have been trying to cope with life in his own way, I chose to separate myself from the environment around him.

To me, I was avoiding a situation I did not want to be in.

To him, it may have felt like one of the people closest to him was pulling away.

That is the part that still sits with me.

Not every withdrawal is intentional.

Sometimes what feels like a boundary to one person feels like abandonment to another.

Sometimes what feels like growth to one person feels like rejection to another.

Sometimes what feels like self-protection to one person feels like distance to another.

And maybe that is where the disconnect happened.

I did not think I was making withdrawals. I thought I was just creating space.

But maybe creating space was the transaction.

Maybe I made several of those withdrawals over the later years of our friendship without realizing it. Maybe he made some too. Maybe we both did.

And eventually, the account reached zero.

Now we do not speak.

That is one of the hardest things about some relationships. The transactions get muddy. You know there was once a surplus. You know the relationship once had value. You know there were real deposits made.

But somehow, somewhere, the account emptied.

Romantic relationships can work the same way, but sometimes the transactions are easier to see.

One relationship that taught me a lot started in college.

I worked in the student life department, and she was a student who would come by the student lounge like many other students did. At first, there was nothing unusual about it. She was just someone I saw around campus.

Then the hand waves turned into hellos.

The hellos turned into conversations.

The conversations turned into me asking her on a date.

We dated for about a month, and then life moved quickly.

That summer, she planned to visit her father in New Jersey. She was excited about the trip, but her mother did not want her to go. Her mother told her that if she went, she would not have a place to live when she came back.

She went anyway.

And her mother kept her word.

While she was away, her mother took her belongings and put them out on the lawn. Her best friend gathered her things and brought them to me.

By the time school was about to start, she had nowhere to go.

I told my mother what was happening. My mother had met her before and liked her. She said, “She’s a lovely young lady. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her out on the streets. If you’re okay with it, she can move in.”

I was okay with it.

So there I was, a young man in a fresh relationship, now living with my girlfriend in my mother’s house.

That relationship lasted five years.

It taught me patience. Compassion. Understanding. It taught me how complicated love can be when two people are young and still becoming themselves.

From age twenty to twenty-five, we changed a lot.

And sometimes growing can mean growing apart, even when you are standing right next to each other.

That is what I believe happened.

We came from different backgrounds. I had a lot of freedom growing up. I had room to make mistakes, learn from them, and continue forward.

She had a more sheltered upbringing. She did not have the same space to explore, mess up, or discover who she was.

So as we got closer to our mid-twenties, she started doing that.

She wanted to go out more. She wanted more time to herself. She started hanging around different people. She started doing things that were not part of the version of the relationship I had grown used to.

And slowly, she started becoming someone I did not fully recognize.

But maybe that is not fair.

Maybe she was not becoming someone else.

Maybe she was becoming herself.

And that is where relationships get complicated.

Because sometimes the thing that feels like a withdrawal to you may be someone else finally making a deposit into themselves.

At the time, every new behavior felt like a small withdrawal from our account.

More time away.

Different friends.

Different interests.

Less familiarity.

Less closeness.

Less of what I thought the relationship was supposed to be.

There were still deposits here and there. There were still moments of love. Still memories. Still history. Still reasons to keep trying.

But the account was no longer balanced.

The small withdrawals kept adding up. Then came bigger withdrawals. Then confusion. Then distance. Then the painful realization that the relationship was not what it used to be.

At one point, the account had been in abundance.

Then suddenly, it felt like we were near a deficit.

But it probably was not sudden at all.

It only felt sudden because I had not been reading the statements.

That is the thing about relationships.

Most of the time, the account tells the truth before we do.

By the time someone says, “This is not working,” the account may have already been empty for a long time.

And then there is family.

Family relationships are different because those accounts are harder to close.

With friendships and romantic relationships, there is usually a point where someone can walk away. The relationship may hurt, but the account can close.

Family is more complicated.

Fortunately, I have a positive relationship with my immediate family. But I know people who do not. I know people who have had massive withdrawals made from their family accounts over and over again.

Disrespect.

Emotional neglect.

Broken trust.

Painful words.

Unresolved trauma.

Repeated disappointment.

And yet, the account never closes.

It just remains open in the negative.

In the red.

In a deficit.

And when an account has been negative for that long, one deposit does not fix it.

One apology does not erase years of pain.

One good holiday does not balance the books.

One nice gesture does not undo a lifetime of withdrawals.

So the account stays open, but unhealthy.

Still connected, but drained.

Still family, but wounded.

Still present, but forever in debt.

That may be one of the most painful places to be in any relationship.

To be unable to fully walk away, but unable to feel whole inside the relationship either.

The emotional piggy bank taught me that relationships require maintenance. They require awareness. They require reciprocity.

You cannot only withdraw and expect the account to stay open.

You cannot stop making deposits and be surprised when the relationship feels empty.

And you cannot rely on history alone to keep a relationship alive.

History explains why the account was opened.

Effort is what keeps it funded.

The older I get, the more I realize relationships usually do not die from one moment.

They die from imbalance.

They die when one person keeps depositing and the other keeps withdrawing.

They die when both people stop paying attention.

They die when distance becomes normal.

They die when growth happens in opposite directions.

They die when the account has been empty for so long that neither person knows how to rebuild it.

But maybe the lesson is not only to ask who has withdrawn from us.

Maybe the harder question is:

Whose account have I been withdrawing from without realizing it?

Because every relationship we value has a balance.

And whether we admit it or not, every interaction is a transaction.

We are always either adding to the account or taking something away.