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When It’s Time to Leave a Relationship

When It’s Time to Leave a Relationship

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When It’s Time to Leave a Relationship

No one can tell you when it’s time to leave a relationship. Just like a ripe fruit, there’s a time and place for it. Only you will know.

The year I turned 28 was the ‘make or break’ year for most relationships in my circle of friends. Everyone was either ‘on a break’, breaking up or getting hitched. Most of my friends (myself included) were in long term relationships and starting to feel the pressure of having to settling down. Peoples’ expectations of you start crumbling in during your late 20s. All of a sudden the ‘field’ you got to play led you to two narrow paths – get married or break up and find someone else to marry. Not surprisingly, about half broke up with their significant other. I was part of that half.

My relationship wasn’t particularly toxic. We met when I was 24 and I thought within a few months that I was going to marry this guy. My mom had always said he was good but questioned if he was ‘good’ for me. I had no idea what she meant. Mothers are so wise. Stephen* was a great guy – down to earth, intelligent, genuine and loving. We dated on and off for 4 years, falling in and out of the mundaneness of a relationship. I was complacent. There was a reason we kept breaking up and getting back together, I just didn’t know it then. When I turned 27, I thought I’d marry Stephen in the next year…not because I was madly in love with him but because I thought it was the next step in my life, that it was what people expected me to do. I think I liked the idea of getting married more than marriage itself. 

Time passed and soon I embarked on an adventure that took me overseas. It was a new life with many new faces and personalities – one I couldn’t imagine Stephen to be part of. I was in trouble. 

Stephen and I had been talking about getting married but my excitement about getting married vastly waned. It was the distance that broke us but what kept us together was fear – mostly my fear of being alone. So, rather than leaving the comforts of a relationship, I stayed in one I was content with. 

I recently went to hear Melissa Ambrosini speak about living out of love and fear. She explained – that people have two motives to act. We do things out of love or out of fear. People stay in toxic relationships out of fear that they might be alone, that no one else will love them…etc. We stay in mediocre relationships because it’s comfortable and having to breakup with someone and be single again when everyone is getting married is scary. I get it. I’ve been there. So how do you know if you’re in a relationship that will go the distance? This isn’t a cosmo quiz and every circumstance is different but maybe it’ll change the way you think about your current squeeze.

What excites you most about getting married? Is it the venue, the honey moon or spending the rest of your life with your man/lady?

Can you love your partner with all their flaws right as they are?

If you broke up tomorrow, what would you be most upset about? That you have to find someone else to date, that you’d have to break it to your family or that he/she won’t be calling you tomorrow to ask about your day?

What’s your gut telling you?

Do you find yourselves breaking up and getting back together? What’s the reason that draws you back to each other?

No one will tell you when it’s time to leave a relationship and when to stay but if you are in one out of fear, it may be time to rethink your relationship. Don’t make decisions out of fear. 

 

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