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

The satisfaction-producing core that’s necessary for a relationship to take root was never there.

it’s too good to leave, that should only be because it is too good to leave, not because you want it to be too good to leave.

there is all too often something going on with power in our relationships that fills them so full of frustration and confusion that all we can think of is getting out.

And women today are just as reluctant to seem like helpless victims.

This translates for the average woman as saying that if she cares about power and uses her personal power, she’s not a normal woman.

This is how you end up feeling that your needs are obliterated and that it’s not worthwhile to even try to get a need met. Ultimately what this does to you is give you a looking-for-ways-to-do-things-behind-your-partner’s -back attitude.

It’s that any attempts to deal with it or fix it will just seem to your partner like an assault on his power and he’ll have to come

Power people do what they do because they feel incredibly unsafe unless they’re holding all the reins of power. They feel as unsafe without power as

Their safety is your nightmare.

are certainly controlling, people who are controlling are often people who are in control, and people who are in control are often people we admire most and feel safest with.

When the others power makes you feel like nothing, you want to destroy them or you want to destroy yourself.

This extra need for safety can come from needing to feel safe from the other person (from insults, rejections, attempts at control) and in needing to feel safe in themselves to do what they want.

If one person’s extra need for safety is so great that he can’t allow the other person to both feel safe and do what she wants, that’s a relationship that’s too bad to stay in.

you can let your partner know that you’re starting to feel judged and he’ll back off. And most of the time there are safe havens of closeness in your relationship where criticism and judgment drop away and as you get more