By Jane Sonnenschein · March 15, 2026

Yesterday, I wrote an essay about why the Chinese word Yuanfen¹ is so difficult to translate into German. In the comments, someone wrote: Yuanfen is about cause and consequence.

There has to be both a cause and an outcome for it to count as Yuanfen. If there is a cause but no outcome, then it is Youyuan wufen²—there was a connection, but no shared ending.

But when I read that comment, the first thought that came into my mind was: Why does the “outcome” have to mean staying together?

Isn’t parting a kind of outcome too?

We seem very used to thinking of an outcome as something complete and happy. As though only reaching the very end, growing old together, and truly having each other can count as xiucheng zhengguo³—arriving at the “right” conclusion.

As for the people who met, fell for each other, walked beside each other sincerely for a time, but did not remain in one another’s lives in the end, we quietly put them into the category of Youyuan wufen. It can make everything that happened seem like nothing more than regret, as though the relationship never really produced anything at all.

But more and more, I feel that this is not true.

Meeting itself is already an outcome.

In such a vast world, two people who once had nothing to do with each other are somehow brought face to face by circumstances that are difficult to explain. That alone is already a result. Not everyone meets. And not every meeting leaves a trace. When two people truly encounter one another, what happened between them is no longer nothing.

Walking deeply alongside someone is an outcome too.

Some people enter your life not to accompany you all the way to the end, but simply to walk one part of the road with you. That part may not be very long, but it can still be real and deep enough that, many years later, you know it cannot be reduced to the light phrase “they just passed through my life.”

You once saw certain things together. You endured certain moments together. You believed in certain things together.

Doesn’t that shared stretch of road count as an outcome?

And if, after going so far together, you eventually separate, I think that is an outcome too.

We simply do not like admitting it.

In the way relationships are commonly understood, the best outcome is supposed to be complete, secure, and blessed. Ideally, the story ends with something like, “And they lived happily ever after.” Only then does it seem to have a proper ending.

But many real relationships do not grow that way.

Not every sincere effort reaches the finish line. Not everything deep between two people necessarily leads to a life together. Some relationships come to an end not because they never meant anything, but precisely because they have already completed the part they were meant to complete.

Sometimes the ending of a relationship is not fulfillment, but exhaustion.

That may sound a little cold. But as we grow older, we slowly come to understand that the question between two people is not simply whether they love each other.

There can also be incompatible personalities, the pressure of reality, the wearing effect of time, disappointments that accumulate again and again, and the helplessness of two people who may both have tried, yet still find themselves becoming less and less able to continue.

It is not that there was a cause but no result.

The result simply was not growing closer, but drifting apart; not possessing each other, but letting go; not a perfect ending, but finally admitting that this was as far as the two of you could travel together.

A friend once asked me, genuinely puzzled: “You were both good people. Why didn’t you end up together? Why did you somehow drift apart—and then neither of you seemed to have an especially easy life afterward?”

The person who asked me this was a woman in her seventies. She had known us for many years.

Even with all her life experience, she still wondered about it. Perhaps it was simply because, in her eyes, we had once been so good together. So good that it seemed almost natural to believe that two people like that should eventually have had a happy ending.

But fate is sometimes terribly unreasonable.

It does not automatically clear the road ahead simply because you were sincere, because you were kind, or because you once truly loved each other.

It can still place obstacle after obstacle in a person’s life. Even a very good relationship may not survive the erosion of reality, the pull of time, and the unexpected hands that fate keeps reaching into our lives.

So when I look back now, I increasingly feel that the ending of some relationships is not possession, but letting go; not completeness, but a bond that ultimately never became a shared life; not growing old together, but simply reaching the place where that part of the journey has to end.

That is why, when I think again about the phrase “a cause without an outcome,” it no longer feels quite right to me.

Many relationships do have an outcome. It is simply not the outcome we were taught from childhood to expect.

We are so used to equating “an outcome” with staying, with two lovers finally ending up together, with a “from now on” that continues indefinitely.

But sometimes what remains from a relationship is not the person.

It is the mark that experience left on you. It is how you changed because that meeting happened. It is the moment when, somewhere along the way, you finally understood what you could endure, what you truly wanted, and what you needed to let go of.

Seen this way, separation is not necessarily only a failure.

Of course it hurts. There is regret. For a while, it may make you feel that all the time you spent together was somehow wasted.

But when you reach a certain age and look back, you may realize that this is not true.

Some departures do not erase the fact that two people once met. Some endings do not erase the road they once walked together. They simply tell you that what grew out of that relationship was not the most perfect outcome in the conventional sense, but another kind of outcome.

Perhaps separating at the right time allows both people to live their own lives in peace, without hatred and without feeling that one still owes the other something.

Perhaps the love itself did not make it all the way to the end, but over the years it slowly settled into a gentler kind of affection.

To that wild and unruly river we call fate, perhaps we are only two people standing on opposite banks who happen to catch sight of each other. We feel something, step into the same boat, and accompany one another for one stretch of the river.

But compared with the great current of fate, we are ultimately very small.

So small that sometimes even all our struggling may not truly change anything. So small that, looking back, the meeting, closeness, and eventual drifting apart of two people may not even amount to a single wave in that river.

The other person does not necessarily have to accompany you all the way to your final destination. In the end, each person has somewhere else to go, another shore of their own.

So of course, if two people can stay together, that is wonderful.

But if they eventually have to part, it does not necessarily have to end in resentment.

Perhaps the ending comes from finally seeing things clearly. Perhaps it comes from becoming more awake to reality. Or perhaps both people are simply exhausted and have no choice but to accept that the story has reached its end.

But whatever it is, it is not “nothing.”

But whatever it is, it is not “nothing.”

So more and more, I feel that what we call Youyuan wufen may not really mean that there was a cause but no outcome.

More often, there was both a cause and an outcome.

The outcome simply was not the one we wanted most.

It was not growing old together. It was not a life that became complete from that point onward.

It was meeting, walking together for a while, and then, at some crossroads where neither person could make the other stay, finally going separate ways.

And going separate ways can itself be a kind of completion.

That is something I have slowly come to understand.

Sometimes, having someone step into the same boat and travel with you for a while is already no small thing.

Whether they can remain beside you all the way to the shore is sometimes something that sincerity alone cannot decide.

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Notes

1. Yuanfen (缘分)
A Chinese idea describing the circumstances or subtle connection that bring people into one another’s lives. It can involve chance, timing, attraction, and a faint sense of fate, but it is usually softer and less fixed than words such as “destiny.” Yuanfen can describe why two people happen to meet, become close, or share part of their lives even when there is no clear rational explanation for why their paths crossed.

2. Youyuan wufen (有缘无分)
A Chinese expression describing two people who had enough yuanfen to meet and become connected, but not the circumstances—or the “share of fate”—to remain together in the end. It often carries a mixture of love, regret, helplessness, resignation, and acceptance. It does not necessarily mean that the relationship was meaningless; rather, the connection was real even though it did not grow into a lasting shared life.

3. Xiucheng zhengguo (修成正果)
Literally, this Buddhist-derived expression refers to attaining the “proper fruit” or final spiritual result after a long process of cultivation. In everyday Chinese, it is often used figuratively for finally reaching a successful, recognized, or complete outcome. When used about relationships, it commonly suggests that a couple has finally “made it”—for example, by staying together, marrying, or reaching the kind of ending society considers complete. The word guo (果) literally means “fruit,” but it can also mean the result or outcome produced by earlier causes. This double meaning is central to the essay’s question: if a relationship ends in separation rather than togetherness, does that really mean it produced no “fruit” at all?

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 分开，难道不也是一种果吗？

German version: Ist auch eine Trennung nicht eine Art Ergebnis?