They didn’t fight on the last day.

There was no shouting, no slammed doors, no final words sharp enough to justify the silence that followed. There was just distance—quiet, polite, permanent. A message left on read. A holiday unanswered. A life continuing without explanation.

No abuse.
No cruelty.
Just a decision.

Somewhere along the way, society taught us a new virtue: protect yourself at all costs.
If something is hard, eliminate it.
If someone disappoints you, walk away.
If a relationship requires endurance, call it toxic.

And families—once the one place where patience was expected—became optional.

In the 1990s, something shifted. Not loudly. Not intentionally. But steadily.
We stopped growing our capacity and started curating our comfort.

Parents, flawed and exhausted, raised children without knowing this would be the bargain. They believed family meant staying—arguing, failing, forgiving, trying again. They endured financial collapse, illness, stress, disappointment, and unfulfilled dreams believing that showing up mattered more than getting it right.

They did not know the rules would change midgame.

Imagine if they had known.

Imagine having children while knowing that one day they might decide you were no longer worth the effort. That disagreement could become exile. That imperfection could be grounds for erasure.

Would we still have tried so hard?
Would we have sacrificed so deeply?
Would we have endured nights of fear and decades of responsibility if love came with an expiration date?

We now live in a world where political disagreement is grounds for moral dismissal. Where Democrats and Republicans don’t debate—they diagnose. Where tolerance means agree with me or disappear.

And we call this progress.

But families are not algorithms.
They cannot be optimized by deletion.
They are forged by endurance—the quiet, unglamorous work of staying when leaving would be easier.

Our parents didn’t get it all right.
It was their first time being alive too.

The family unit didn’t become frail because people were cruel.
It became frail because we forgot that strength is built by carrying weight—not avoiding it.

And maybe the real tragedy isn’t that people walk away now.

It’s that we’ve taught them to believe that leaving is the same as healing.