When the only thing keeping you there is the time you’ve already spent there. Here’s the best advice on leaving from a relationship expert, plus our take.
When a longterm relationship is going south, if you’re like most people you don’t want call it quits, even though you know it’s the right thing to do. You’ve already invested years, maybe even four years, as long as you were in college. Don’t you deserve a degree? Leave that relationship now, without a ring, and it would all feel like such a waste.
Nearly all of us have had this experience of knowing we have to leave yet choosing to stay, or we have a best friend who has gone through it. It’s painful to own up to the truth, which is that no amount of time or trying or talking will fix things, the spark is gone, and the sooner you call it quits, the better. To stay is to settle. But that’s not what we want to hear in the moment when we are trying to stick it out..
How to Think About Leaving
How and when do you know it’s time to leave? You may be stig around because you already invested so much time, and the clock is running out on your timetable to have kids. You think: What if it takes years to find someone else, and even more years to get engaged, get married, and then have kids? That could mean five more years until babies come into the picture.
Isn’t fixing things, communicating, trying to mend and repair the bond a safer way to go, especially if you worry time is running out?
If the bond is truly broken and you both have no desire to repair it, and the only reason you’re sticking is that you worry you won’t be able to beat the buzzer to that life vision of being a mom, settled down with a couple of kids and a spouse, then leaving is the best course of action.
You may be trying to convince yourself that you can grin (or grit your teeth) and bare it, no matter how flawed or annoying your partner is, or that the trust is gone. After all, you rationalize, all relationships lose their luster, right? So you can polish it up and live with the dings. at least you’ll have your happily (or tolerably happy), ever after if you just hang in there, right? Wrong.
Here is some great advice on how to think about moving on, from Shivani Pau. You deserve to be happy from the start. That vision you have for kids and a family? It doesn’t include you being unhappy or resentful, or insecure about here you stand with your partner.
The vision of your future will work itself out. Watch this for relationship inspiration.
Fatherly Advice About Finding a match
“I think the best piece of advice. My dad gave me was when I was struggling in a relationship, he said Shivani, if you weren’t enjoying your job, would you tell me that you’re not gonna leave that job because there’s no other jobs in the world? Or would you just stay in that miserable job forever?
“He was like, exactly! So when you’re not happy in a relationship, I say this all the time, because my parents have been so positive about reinforcing it.
“There are millions of people in the world. Why on earth do you think you’re not gonna find someone? It’s bizarre to me.
“By the way, I’m not saying it’s easy when you have to really leave a relationship. It’s very difficult you have a lot of emotional attachment, you have a lot of social attachments, sometimes your friends are similar, some people are living together, it’s hard.
“But at the end of the day you have one life. And when you think about the fact that you just have one life and that’s it and you’re just gonna die after. You’re never gonna get the chance to feel that love or that affection or that feeling again. Why would you waste it on someone?”
Our Take: Father knows best, in this case. The advice to put yourself in the position of being a strong candidate for love means you flip the switch on the insecure voice in your head that says you won’t find someone, and instead logically points out that you will. And the sooner you are free to start looking, the better! Make that leap and believe in your happier future.
