Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship

by Mira Kirshenbaum

some combination of love and skill enables you to resolve or ignore your differences.

Diagnostic question #21. In spite of all the ways you’re different, would you say that deep down or in some respect that’s important to you your partner is someone just like you in a way you feel good about?

Your feelings have to be your standard here. Do you feel you and your partner are truly similar deep down and in a way that’s important to you?

GUIDELINE #21 If you truly feel that your partner is like you in some way that’s meaningful and that you feel good about, there’s a real chance your relationship is too good to leave. But if there’s no

similarity at all in any way that’s important to you—so that you feel as if your partner is alien—most people in similiar situations ended up being happy if they left. Quick take: Somehow, somewhere, when you look deep in your partner’s eyes you’ve got to be able to see yourself.

I kept looking at the little picture of this or that about my partner or this or that hope or fear about what it would be like if I left, when I should’ve been looking at the big picture.”

Inside the tunnel of relationship ambivalence, what you see is how stuck you feel and the endless realities of your current life and a few scary or enticing slivers of what awaits you on the other side. You’ve got to get outside that tunnel if you want to clearly see what your options are.

But the point is that figuring out the choice that’s best for you requires that you look at the whole picture.

For Matt, tunnel vision led to a mistaken decision to leave. It can just as easily lead to a mistaken decision to stay.

Do this. At the top of one sheet of paper write the words: “Things I look forward to in my new life when I think about leaving.” At the top of another sheet of paper write the words: “Things I’m afraid of in a new life that make me think about staying.”

Now you have the opportunity to correct that tunnel vision. For each item on your list ask yourself, • “Is this true?” • “Is this likely?” Then ask yourself, • “What else is possible?” • “What’s most likely?”

Only you have access to developing new information that will completely change your understanding of the realities you face. But you’ve got to develop this new information. If nothing else, ask people you know whether they think your hopes and fears are realistic. What hopes and fears do they think are more realistic? You’re not asking these people about the realities inside your relationship, but about realities outside your relationship that they’re a lot more qualified to comment on.

Diagnostic question #22. With your new, more complete, more realistic set of information about what it would be like for you if you left, have you discovered new, more probable realities that now make leaving seem impossibly difficult or unpleasant?

To help you develop this information, think about what awaits you by going through this checklist of issues: • Where will you live? How will you be able to afford it? Will you be able to commute to your job from there? • How much savings will you have available to you after you leave? How much of your income will you have available? Will that be enough? • What are your prospects for meeting people? This is a time to be brutally honest: do you have the characteristics that’ll make it relatively

easy to find dates? Will you want to go through the process of meeting new people? • Is it realistically likely that you’ll be lonely in your new life? How well do you cope with loneliness? • What’s going to happen with the kids? Is joint custody a possibility, and do you want it? Is not having custody likely for you; is that acceptable to you? Is having custody more likely, and have you thought through what it’s like to parent kids on your own? • What will being on your own do to your ability to work? • Is it realistic that the friends you’re counting on being there for you will end up being there? (The friends you had as individuals usually end up staying friends with the woman, not the man, but married friends of yours often distance themselves from both of you.) • How do yo...

GUIDELINE #22 At this point in the process, as you look more realistically at what it will be like for you to leave, if this fresh look clearly makes leaving seem too difficult and makes staying seem desirable, then you’ve gotten the clarity you were looking for and you know you’ll be happier staying. Quick take: If staying makes sense when you really check into it, it makes sense to stay.

But you want to make sure you don’t fall back into ambivalence by using the balance-scale approach.

balance. It’s an attempt to help you find that one piece of overlooked reality that suddenly sheds a completel...

Diagnostic question #23. With your new, more complete, more realistic set of information about what it would be like to leave, have you discovered new, more probable

realities that now make leaving seem easier, more attractive, and make staying no longer desirable?

GUIDELINE #23 If looking more realistically at what it will actually be like for you to leave your relationship clearly makes leaving seem easier and more attractive to you and makes staying seem like a bad idea, then you’ve gotten the clarity you were looking for and you’ll be happier if you

leave. Quick take: If leaving makes sense when you really check into it, then it makes sense to leave.

Divorce isn’t good for children but neither is staying in a relationship that’s too bad to stay in.

First, this chapter focuses on practicalities that, when you see them, make you change the way you feel about staying or leaving.

children. I’m talking about things like having infants or toddlers that need tremendous amounts of attention. The likelihood or unlikelihood of the noncustodial parent paying childcare. The difficulty of finding someone to look after the kids while you work. The scarcity of time for yourself. You’ve probably thought about most of these already. If not, just ask some of your friends.

Second, here’s the difference having children can make. They can appropriately affect th...

Respect is the soil out of which self-esteem grows.

we need to respect our partners, if for nothing else than as a resource in our lives.

Diagnostic question #24. Does your partner do such a good job of conveying the idea that you’re a nut or a jerk or a loser or an idiot about parts of yourself that are important to you that you’ve started to really become demonstrably convinced of it yourself?

GUIDELINE #24 If your partner is starting to convince you through disrespectful words and actions that you’re a nut or a jerk or a loser or an idiot about parts of yourself that are important to you, then he’s starting to damage the way you see yourself and your entire sense of what you’re able to do. For almost everyone in a relationship where disrespect reaches this point, they’re happy when they leave and unhappy if they stay. Quick take: If someone is starting to cut your legs out from under you, you’ve got to walk out while you still have legs.

Here are the crucial ingredients in this guideline: 1. “Starting to convince you.” Your partner is saying things that you’re actually coming to believe are true.

2. “Through disrespectful words and actions.” Your partner convinces you not only by saying things that put you down but by doing things.

3. “You’re a nut or a jerk or a loser or an idiot.”

about here gets at the heart of what we need to function as whole people. You can’t function if you think you’re crazy or if you think that no one likes you or if you think that you never do anything right or if you think that you’re basically stupid. Disrespect that starts to convince you of this is disrespect that undermines what you need to function.

“Parts of yourself that are important to you.” You not only can’t function if you believe there’s something wrong with you as a whole.

It’s important to understand why disrespect is as universal in relationships as low-level pollution is in every part of our daily lives.

You get respect from being who you’re supposed to be in your relationship, such as lover, income earner, parent, house maintainer. • You get respect from how well you deliver on your promises, such as your promise to be a successful business person or artist or your promise to keep your youthful figure or always be supportive. • You get respect for delivering surprises, for somewhere along the line accomplishing something or being something beyond your partner’s expectations. • You get respect for having strengths and abilities in areas where your partner happens to be weak, such as being a whiz at family finances where your partner has trouble balancing a checkbook or being really good with the kids where your partner gets overwhelmed.

Diagnostic question #25. As you think about your partner’s disrespect, is it clear to you that you do everything possible to limit

your contact with your partner, except for times where you absolutely must interact?

GUIDELINE #25 If your partner is all too often all too disrespectful to you and you realize that you do everything possible to limit your contact with your partner, except for those times where you absolutely must interact, then the level of disrespect has spoiled the atmosphere of your relationship and you’ll be happy if you leave. Quick take: The water’s too bad to drink when you find you’ve stopped drinking the water.

Avoidance and distance are the measure of a level of disrespect that, even though it’s nontoxic, is too unpleasant for you to have to put up with.

It’s important to understand that your doing “everything possible to limit your contact with your partner” goe...

Every time you think about something and it occurs to you to share y...

partner and you don‘t, you’re limiting your contact with him. • Every time you want to ask her a question and you don’t, you’re limiting your contact with her. • Every time you want to tell him about some small triumph or disaster in your life and you stay silent, you’re limiting your contact with him. • Every time you think of the two of you doing something together and yet don’t even bring it up, you’re limiting your contact with her. • Every time there’s a real opportunity for some kind of intimacy and you let that opportunity slip past, you’re limiting your contact with her. • Every time th...

every once in a while I run into a relationship where the respect really does come through. It’s not just that your partner says that she respects you—she makes you feel it.

Diagnostic question #26. Do you feel that your partner, overall and more often than not, shows concrete support for and genuine interest in the things you’re trying to do that are important to you?

This goes far beyond and is really very different from your partner’s saying you’re a “good person.” This is really about your partner’s delivering support and interest about the things you care about in life that are hard for you that you’re trying to do something about.

His opinion of the business world didn’t change, of course. But he “got” how much Sasha cared about what she was doing and how difficult it was for her and how hard she was trying to make it happen.

It’s very easy when you’re in an iffy relationship to not see real treasure because it gets lost with all the junk, like a fabulous antique that can’t catch your eye because it’s in a store filled with second-rate secondhand furniture.

GUIDELINE #26 If you feel that your partner shows support for and interest in the things you’re trying to do that are important to you, and does so in ways that are substantial and concrete and that make a real difference to you, then most people who’ve been in your situation have said that they’re in a relationship that’s too good to leave. Quick take: Being there when it counts is respect that delivers.