Burning Bridges that Lead to Nowhere
How to consciously and compassionately walk away (especially as a loving HSP—Highly Sensitive Person).
It’s far preferable to build a bridge than burn one; but both are necessary at times. Burning a bridge should not be taken lightly (pun intended). It should also not be avoided, if it’s the only way to clear a path to freedom. It’s easier to destroy than it is to build. If at all possible, we must always do our best to repair, repair, repair. If a person doesn’t know how to repair, all they need do is imagine the harm they caused was to someone they actually valued, respected, wanted, or needed something from—once they do that, they will be flooded with ideas for how to create repair. People can proclaim their love, and it may even be sincere; but if they do not respect us, or our love, they will not value the relationship enough to put the work in that is required to repair and maintain a bridge in a healthy relationship. Unfortunately, there is no amount of love that can compensate for a lack of respect.
How To (Repair or) Build a Bridge
1. Begin with the pillars made of commitment. (When we commit, we don’t give up or walk away; we put in the work using planks of honesty, communication, integrity, and love.)
2. Seek actions of repair by acknowledging the specific hurt caused. (You can’t fix or replace a plank of communication with a varnish of love; bridges crumble without communication and congruence between our actions and our words, which our integrity manages.)
3. Take ownership for the harm created. (We cannot fix what we refuse to see as broken.)
4. Become accountable for the choices which caused the destruction. (If we don’t figure out how we broke the plank to begin with, we’re likely to break it again.)
5. Demonstrate through changed behavior that the damage has been repaired. (Once we damage a relationship with our words, we can only repair it with our actions.)
Who Burns Bridges?
Typically, there are two types of people who burn bridges: 1. Those who are reckless and impulsive and think everyone else is to blame for all their problems and often regret burning a bridge after doing so. 2. Highly sensitive people who carefully deliberate all choices with both a compassionate humility and a decisive confidence, because they’ve learned to take radical responsibility for the problems in their life and the access, they allow, that helps create those problems, by watering dead flowers on broken bridges.
When Not to Burn a Bridge
We can’t burn bridges to escape ourselves, because wherever we go, there we are. If we are the ones with the problems, the inability to offer respectful reciprocity and communicate honestly and effectively about how we are and are not comfortable engaging in relationships, then we will find ourselves in a constant loop of burning bridges with nowhere left to cross and no one left to see. Avoiding others to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths about ourselves only leads our lives into a Groundhog Day movie scenario. (For some people repetition is a comfort; for others it’s abuse.) The lesson we postpone learning in one difficult relationship will show up in another, over and over again. Until we take accountability for our actions, commit to being honest, present, and learn the art of repair to build again, we will burnout the light in ourselves and others, trying to run away from the ownership of our responsibilities.
When Do We Burn a Bridge?
We burn a bridge when we’ve done the brave work of learning how to show up for ourselves and others and still find ourselves in a relationship standstill with someone who hasn’t done that work and refuses to. We can lead a horse to water, but we can’t make it drink. If we bring a half a dozen nourishing meals to each and every potluck and all the other person brings to the table is food poisoning, it may be time to burn a bridge. If all other measures for healing and repair have been exhausted, it’s probably time to burn a bridge. When a loving and emotionally mature person chooses to consciously burn a bridge, it’s important to note that there were usually countless attempts made to prevent that from happening—sometimes decades of emotional labor were invested into teaching honest communication skills as a second language to someone fluent in phony. Many people believe that honesty is only needed for relationships of depth. Plenty of people are willing to engage with others only on the surface, where polite lies live. Then there are those of us who see how living in the shallow has damaged humanity and created a disconnect to the highest truth within and to each other and therefore refuse to contribute to the problem of perpetuating a lie and have committed to the solution of honest communication.
Why Burn a Bridge?
It’s a drastic measure to go to such an extreme as to burn a bridge, so why do it? We burn a bridge when it becomes too dangerous to cross, because it’s in disrepair and those who can fix it refuse to put in the work to do so. Therefore, maintaining a broken bridge puts us or our loved ones in harm’s way. Burning the bridge protects us from the temptation to continually try and repair the parts that don’t belong to us, thereby perpetually injuring ourselves in the process and robbing the other side of the opportunity for growth and the honor of meeting their own responsibilities (read the story of the Butterfly). We burn a bridge as the ultimate boundary to protect our vulnerability. Bridges create a direct path for them to continually hurt us, while we continually forgive them. We burn the bridge to end the cycle.
How Do We Burn a Bridge?
It’s easier to burn a bridge to someone or something we don’t like, need, or want, than it is to something we desire to keep. It’s much harder to burn a bridge when we can see the potential for good in the the other person, job, community, or family. We see the allure on the other side but are blinded to the poisonous sting of the promise to do better that never comes to pass because it’s hidden in the lush beauty that we want to believe will prevail but rarely does. How many times are we supposed to allow ourselves and/or our children to be disrespected and hurt by the actions of people we were supposed to be able to trust to care for and protect us? How many times are we supposed to allow ourselves and/or our children to be disrespected and hurt in the name of forgiveness and seeing the potential of who those people could be versus accepting the reality of what they do?
Sage Words FREEDOM Book One provides a guide of consideration for when to walk away, “The first time someone causes harm, it’s a human imperfection to be forgiven. The second time, it’s a pattern to be addressed. The third time, we are now an accomplice to our own pain.” When we burn a bridge, we stop being an accomplice to our own pain. That doesn’t mean three strikes you’re out. It means that the moment we see the pattern, we alter course and empower ourselves by taking personal responsibility for the people we choose to engage with. The longer we believe in a person’s words and potential, versus believing in who they reveal themselves to be through their repeated actions, the longer we are prolonging our pain by having them in our lives. We must believe people when they show us who they are and use them as an example of what not to be when their words don’t match their behavior. Deciding not to have chaos in our lives begins with us and what we open our doors to.
When it comes to family, spouses, a dream job, or career, we tend to hold out hope for as long as possible. We try everything we can to make it work: therapy, mediators, and countless rounds of discussions to resolve the conflict or agree to a solution. However, some people and/or institutions commit to do better but are unable to follow through. Taking accountability would require them to face an uncomfortable truth about who they are or how they function in the world and change something about themselves they simply aren’t willing or able to change. They’d rather sweep uncomfortable truths under the rug because they can get away with doing it most of the time. It doesn’t serve their privilege to have to be accountable for the dirt they create.
As stated in Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, “Unfortunately, the type of ‘maturity’ that comes from sweeping things under the rug can lead to dishonesty with others and betrayal of self. The pile under the rug can turn into a mound; and if it goes unaddressed, it becomes the elephant in the room everyone continually stumbles over, until someone gets seriously hurt or destroyed by all the unspoken words piling up under our feet. Soon a tragically comic dysfunctional routine of ‘Have a nice trip? See you next fall!’ plays out on a loop with family, friends, and work relationships until the messy debris is properly addressed and discarded. It’s not airing one’s dirty laundry to admit the emperor wears no clothes. Through maturity we can speak truth to power without insult or shame—but it requires getting honest with ourselves and the feelings that are forming our ‘truth.’ Just because a person’s truth is that they have a right to cause harm, doesn’t mean it is morally right to cause that harm.”
Who Do We Burn Bridges With?
We burn bridges with people who are abusive, either mentally, physically, or emotionally. We burn bridges with hypocrites, manipulators, gaslighters, and troublemakers (those who are so bored, angry, or lonely in their personal lives that they stir the pot of of drama in other people’s lives just to get attention, or to intentionally create fires that only they can put out). We burn a bridge with the people who recommend that we communicate to resolve the issue they created by not communicating in the first place. We burn bridges with the people who say, “Let it go and move on,” after finally admitting that the years of passive aggression, exclusion, contempt, and inability to say what they mean and mean what they say was all due to something that happened decades ago that they have never let go of and learned to move on from. We burn bridges with people who say, “Turn the other cheek,” and just find a way to “get along” which translates to, “Just keep allowing us to hurt you and your child and deny that harm is taking place.” How many times are we expected to have the same conflict with the same people or person that never gets properly resolved?
The 50 Rule Move
In chess, there is something called “The 50-rule move” which mercifully ends a game that no one is able to win. When a player can neither move a pawn forward nor capture a piece, both players are essentially just moving the same pieces around the board and making no progress (like relationships that have the same issues over and over but never a resolution. Therefore, after doing this 50 times in chess, both parties stop playing because they realize the game is over. The purpose of this rule is to prevent a player with no chance of winning (the one who keeps promising to do better but never changes) from obstinately continuing to play indefinitely or seeking to win by tiring the opponent (the one who keeps getting hurt and forgiving). At some point, if we can’t get people to be accountable to simply say what they mean and mean what they say, we must choose to tap out, move on, and burn that bridge to set ourselves free and maintain our own peace.
When Do We Walk Away?
When we finally walk away it’s often because we’ve already communicated (argued, discussed, debated), and they agreed upon new forms of conduct which they did not honor. We walk away because we have self-respect, and we refuse to betray ourselves. We walk away because we know it’s time to reclaim our peace, and removing ourselves from the equation is often the only way.
We will know when a relationship is over when we feel neutral equanimity within ourselves. We are neither angry, nor joyful—we aren’t clinging to what might have been because we have let go of what is. Whether it’s a relationship based on romance, friendship, or family, we know it’s the end when any further discussion will simply be a platform of justifications for hurtful behavior that ends with empty promises to change and do better, which never come to pass. We know it’s the end when we have no desire to react, because we’ve learned to wear our pearls around our neck and not cast them at the feet of swine.
We will know we are done when silence becomes our peace—when we retire from the emotional labor of crossing rivers for them when they wouldn't cross the road for us. When their bread crumb offers lead to nothing more than intermittent reinforcement and all engagement becomes circular in nature because they are better at making a case for not being wrong than they are at doing right, that’s when we know it’s time to walk away.
It’s one thing when the pain of the relationship only affects us, it’s quite another when it hurts our child. When we value ourselves and our self-respect—and we know our behavior is a model for our children and that if it were our child in our shoes, with or without a child of their own to protect, we would want them to walk away too for their own self-respect—that’s when we know it’s time to burn the bridge.
When a person is incapable of being accountable for their lack of integrity, we realize that if they could have changed, they would have. When we miss them from our lives, we must remember we are missing the ideal we had of them, not the reality which was always missing. We walk away when we have nothing more to give because we gave our all and it wasn’t valued enough to be treated with love, respect, and reciprocity.
How to Respectfully Interact After You Burn a Bridge
What do we say when approached by someone we burned a bridge with who we cannot get away from because we remain in the same community together, be that a job, family, in-laws, or other? We say the truth. By being brave enough to tell the truth with kindness and have the courage to be honest, clear, and direct we can move through almost any difficult situation with grace and honor. We can choose our words carefully from a place of heart-centered authenticity. In dealing with a sensitive matter, before we speak directly to anyone, we can use empathy and think of karma and how we would feel if someone spoke the same words to us that we plan to speak to them.
When “Grey-Rocking” Prolongs the Problem
Sometimes grey rocking is used to keep up appearances, which is another way of saying— being phony so as not to draw attention to or have to address the truth. No one wants to attend a gathering with someone who greets them with a fake smile, cold shoulder, curt “grey rocking” responses, and passive aggressive contempt. It makes everyone uncomfortable. Neither does anyone want to attend a gathering where someone is misleading with performative gestures and words of love and affection only to never follow through with those words with corresponding actions or the endlessly exhausting and insulting barrage of false polite pleasantries and ruinous empathy-lies by omission to spare the other person’s feelings—all the while using crazy-making behaviors through snide remarks and back-handed compliments of belittling, placating, appeasing, and patronizing condescension. Likewise, no one wants to fear a confrontation of rude aggression in which someone makes a scene because they end up in the same room with a person who they’ve burned a bridge with. If we find ourselves at a wedding, funeral, or mandatory work related event with a person with whom we have unresolved conflict, or a person with whom we had conflict and the resolution was to end the relationship, the best course of action is to either not speak at all or only speak with honesty—in other words, at the time of the conflict we should get in the habit of learning how to speak now or forever hold our peace afterward.
We can do better than vacillating between being fake, being rude, or being aggressive and making a scene. We can choose to simply be and not engage at all if possible, or to use radical candor (caring personally and challenging directly) when necessary, so that people know exactly where we stand with them. This is highly preferable to the false pretense, of sugar to one’s face and salt behind their back. If a person doesn’t like us, wouldn’t we rather know so that we don’t waste our time trying to build a bridge that leads to nowhere? Using “grey rock” techniques is not always a clear indicator that a person isn’t interested in having a relationship with us, especially to those who are neurodivergent and might see any engagement as hopeful potential. Some people are so reserved that “grey rock” communication is their default communication with both the people they like and dislike. HSPs (highly sensitive persons) tend to be so open and sincere that they project their sincerity onto others and believe the words people use while overlooking their contradictory actions. This is why it’s important to communicate with clear and direct language exactly how we really feel and not always rely on “grey rock” techniques, particularly with people who remain in our lives because they belong to the same community (job, family, etc).
What Does Clear and Direct Language Sound Like When We Speak to A Person With Whom We Burned A Bridge?
If we are approached by the person with whom we burned a bridge, and continue to be resolute in our convictions, we can remain in our integrity by responding in the following way: “I have no desire to be unkind to you by being rude in order to be honest; and I have no desire to be unkind to me by being phony in order to be polite. Therefore, while I may forgive you, I choose not to engage with you…either to your face, or behind your back. This is neither a punishment nor a grudge but rather a boundary for peace. We take up space under the same theater of life so I cannot escape your presence in my world; but your orchestra seats have been removed and you will now be in the nosebleed section of my life. Feel free to enjoy the show but keep it to yourself. I no longer concern myself with what you say, what you think, or what you do. The bridge between us has been burned which is for the highest and best for all concerned as there were too many pieces in disrepair, an accident waiting to happen again and again. There is no path open that leads you to having direct access to me. However, I understand that the only constant thing in life is change. As the Buddhist say, this moment is “not always so.” There’s always hope for change; but it requires repair, and that repair will have to come from you. I will not build another bridge where my pillars are the sole supporters of the foundation. Words alone do not another bridge build. Unless and until that happens, I choose not to cross another bridge. I choose not to engage with you.”
If that doesn’t get them to leave you alone, saying, “Don’t talk to me” and walking away should do the trick. As a last resort, we can quietly sing Cardi B’s line from Bodak Yellow, “If I see you and I don't speak that means I don't f*ck with you.” We teach people how to treat us by what we passively allow and give them permission to do. We stop that from happening when we walk away and say, “Come correct or don’t come at all.” A highly sensitive person, a Lightworker, has a great deal to offer the world; but their gifts are not appreciated by everyone, and therefore they deserve to be protected and preserved for the people who value who they are and what they give. Not everyone deserves direct access to our vulnerabilities and only we have the power to make that discernment. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves, and others, is make the painful choice to consciously and compassionately walk away by burning bridges that lead to nowhere.
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Sage Justice is achingly sincere. Balancing wisdom and humor she most often writes deeply personal solution based pieces about the enduring virtues that connect us all: love and healing. She is an award-winning playwright and critically acclaimed performing artist who has appeared on stages from Madison Square Garden in New York City, to The Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. Ms. Justice is the author of Sage Words FREEDOM Book One, an activist, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and an alumna Artist-In-Residence of Chateau Orquevaux, France. She is a co-founder of The Unity Project which fuses activism with art, to educate and inspire, with a special emphasis on community engagement to end homelessness. She has a series of short reels about living with the rare genetic disorder, Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that you can find in a highlight reel on her Instagram page @SageWords2027.