RELATIONSHIPS: MINDSETS IN LOVE (OR NOT)
What was that about the course of true love never running smooth? Well, the course to
true love isn’t so smooth, either. That path is often strewn with disappointments and heartbreaks.
Some people let these experiences scar them and prevent them from forming satisfying
relationships in the future. Others are able to heal and move on. What separates them? To find
out, we recruited more than a hundred people and asked them to tell us about a terrible rejection.
When I first got to New York I was incredibly lonely. I didn’t know a soul and I totally felt like I
didn’t belong here. After about a year of misery I met Jack. It’s almost an understatement to say
that we clicked instantly, we felt like we had known each other forever. It wasn’t long before we
were living together and doing everything together. I thought I would spend my whole life with
him and he said he felt the same way. Two really happy years passed. Then one day I came home
and found a note. He said he had to leave, don’t try to find him. He didn’t even sign it love. I
never heard from him again. Sometimes when the phone rings I still think maybe it’s him.
We heard a variation of that story over and over again. People with both mindsets told
stories like this. Almost everyone, at one time or another, had been in love and had been hurt.
What differed—and differed dramatically—was how they dealt with it.
After they told their stories, we asked them follow-up questions: What did this mean to
you? How did you handle it? What were you hoping for?
When people had the fixed mindset, they felt judged and labeled by the rejection.
Permanently labeled. It was as though a verdict had been handed down and branded on their
foreheads: UNLOVABLE! And they lashed out.
Because the fixed mindset gives them no recipe for healing their wound, all they could do
was hope to wound the person who inflicted it. Lydia, the woman in the story above, told us that
she had lasting, intense feelings of bitterness: “I would get back at him, hurt him any way I could
if I got the chance. He deserves it.”
In fact, for people with the fixed mindset, their number one goal came through loud and
clear. Revenge. As one man put it, “She took my worth with her when she left. Not a day goes by
I don’t think about how to make her pay.” During the study, I asked one of my fixed-mindset
friends about her divorce. I’ll never forget what she said. “If I had to choose between me being
happy and him being miserable, I would definitely want him to be miserable.”
It had to be a person with the fixed mindset who coined the phrase “Revenge is
sweet”—the idea that with revenge comes your redemption—because people with the growth
mindset have little taste for it. The stories they told were every bit as wrenching, but their
reactions couldn’t have been more different.
For them, it was about understanding, forgiving, and moving on. Although they were
often deeply hurt by what happened, they wanted to learn from it: “That relationship and how it
ended really taught me the importance of communicating. I used to think love conquers all, but
now I know it needs a lot of help.” This same man went on to say, “I also learned something
about who’s right for me. I guess every relationship teaches you more about who’s right for
you.”
There is a French expression: “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.” To understand all
is to forgive all. Of course, this can be carried too far, but it’s a good place to start. For people
with the growth mindset, the number one goal was forgiveness. As one woman said: “I’m no
saint, but I knew for my own peace of mind that I had to forgive and forget. He hurt me but I had
a whole life waiting for me and I’ll be damned if I was going to live it in the past. One day I just