The myth of outgrowing each other

The myth of outgrowing each other

There are few phrases quite as self-indulgent and flattering as “I outgrew them.”

When relationships fade, we are often tempted to explain the loss by painting it as a picture of personal growth. One person moved forward while the other remained behind. One evolved while the other stayed stagnant.

I have never found this explanation particularly convincing. The phrase itself contains an assumption that is impossible to verify: that one person’s changes constituted growth or improvement while the other’s did not.

My biggest problem with the language of ‘outgrowing’ people is that it treats change and improvement as though they are interchangeable. They are not.

Why? Because people don’t necessarily grow in the way we imagine. They progress through life, accumulate experiences and change. But that doesn’t mean they’re moving up some universal ladder of human development.

Photo by Gian Zaninelli on Unsplash

After all, what does growth actually mean? Is the other person who pursues a career more developed than the person who prioritises relationships? Is the one who pursues higher education better than someone who does not? The answer really depends entirely on the values we bring to the question.

I understand the temptation to adopt this belief and phrase as they’re comforting and offer some clarity. Canadian Sociologist Erving Goffman (1956, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life) argued that humans actively manage the impressions they give to others. In this light, the phrase “I outgrew them” may reveal as much about how we wish to present ourselves as it does about the relationship itself. It allows us to cast ourselves as the protagonist of the story, a character who is surely growing and evolving. And almost every story needs a villain.

It is easier to believe that one person has moved forward while the other has remained behind than to accept a more mundane reality. Sometimes relationships end not because somebody failed, but because life changed. Sometimes, nobody is the villain. Sometimes we just stop relating to each other. That’s not a crime.

Perhaps I’m not the most qualified to comment on this matter. Around six years at university has made me unusually content with ambiguity; I am used to competing explanations, incomplete evidence, and conclusions that begin with ‘it depends’. But outside of academia, ambiguity is often treated as a problem to be solved rather than a reality to be accepted.

Photo by Boitumelo on Unsplash

The appeal of claiming to have outgrown our relationships lies not in its accuracy but in its simplicity. It offers certainty where ambiguity exists, and winners and losers where there may be none at all. Except, relationships are far messier and more complex than the stories we tell about them.

The fact that two people no longer fit together does not necessarily mean that one of them failed to grow. More often, it simply means they arrived in different places. We are quick to interpret difference as evidence of progress, yet the two are not the same thing.