A clear ending can protect the good memories from a long, resentful decline.

Things that are over but not ended tend to spoil slowly. The last stretch fills with small withdrawals and quiet scorekeeping, and that final chapter has a way of coloring everything before it, so a good decade gets remembered through a bad year. An honest ending is not a failure of loyalty. Sometimes it is the last kind thing still available to both people.

If something in your life has been fading for a while, you might sit with what an honest close would look like, without deciding anything yet. Ask gently whether staying is care or the avoidance of one difficult conversation.