Post by greatcoastal on May 28, 2023 6:13:58 GMT -5
medium.com/be-loved/how-do-you-know-when-its-time-to-end-a-relationship-with-someone-you-love-4dc156bf5b
How Do You Know When It’s Time to End a Relationship With Someone You Love?
These 5 things are an indicator you should run
We make relationships more complicated than they are. It’s like parenting. If only we stuck to a few cardinal rules it would be easier. But we get bogged down in the day-to-day and exhaustion wears us down.
We’re trying to do it all.
We’re trying to keep it all together.
I’ve spent more than a decade in the counseling and research of love and relationships. I am a marketer, journalist, and former business columnist turned relationship columnist.
My crumbling marriage took a deep dive.
Out of necessity, it transitioned me into a relationship expert.
We spend a great deal of time focusing on the one we love. We put all of our energy into them. We view our relationships by how we feel about our significant other.
We love them.
But my psychologist marriage counselor once gave me great advice.
“A healthy love relationship is not gauged by how I feel about him/her,” he said. “But how I feel about me when I am with him/her.”
I wrote about it more in this article, “You Need to Ask Yourself This One Relationship Question.” It’s worth the read because it’s extremely clarifying. It takes you out of the day-to-day relationship and into the core principles of what is healthy and what is unhealthy.
I’ve written the following 5 indicators as a supplement to this piece.
5 Things that are indicators you should run from your relationship.
1. When your spouse makes your life feel out of control
If your world feels out of control it’s a signal to get out of your relationship.
Even before my severe marital problems began, my husband made my world feel out of control. It wasn’t a daily, weekly, or monthly constant. It was when he disagreed with me, I needed something from him, or something was important to me.
He became unpredictable.
Would he not show up for an important charity event I had planned? Would he not speak to me for days? Would he intentionally ruin my birthday or a holiday? Would he show up without stopping to purchase what I told him I needed? Would he leave me without a ride after surgery?
The circumstances were fluid and would change.
But his degree of uncertainty and unpredictability would not.
My husband would make sure he passive-aggressively sabotaged, negatively impacted, or completely ruined anything he disagreed with.
He would make it clear he was the one in control.
When our marriage worsened, he began uncharacteristically drinking. It amplified the sense that my world felt out of control. No matter what I did he would control me. If he couldn’t hurt me any longer then he would drink abusively and upset me that way.
Making my world out of control reinforced his control.
When a person makes your life feel out of control get away from them.
2. When a person makes you beg them to care or stop hurting you
You shouldn’t have to repeatedly tell someone they are negatively impacting you.
When you have to ask somebody to care about you, they’re already telling you they don’t. If you are being hurt in the same manner over and over again it’s time to get out of your relationship.
Generally speaking, we tolerate this because it becomes a cyclical narrative.
We become immune to the circular arguments we have with our spouses.
We also tolerate it because overly caring people can be enablers. Enablers are extremely caring individuals who will tolerate repeatedly bad behavior, make excuses for the one they love, and remain in a bad situation.
Enablers do this because they believe they are being kind.
They believe they are being loyal and devoted. They believe they are protecting the one they love. They can believe if they leave something worse could happen. They convince themselves, for instance, if they leave a drinker the drinker might not be safe.
Enablers are the king and queens of excuses.
They justify the bad behavior of someone they love.
They will say things like, “I know he was mean but he’s stressed at work. I know she’s behaving badly but she’s going through a hard time. I know he shouldn’t make me cry but he doesn’t mean to. I know she’s out of control but she’s a good person.”
The irony?
While the enabler is putting the one they love on a pedestal. While the enabler is giving the one they love every benefit of the doubt in the book. While the enable is tolerating the intolerable. While the enabler is protecting their significant other.
The person repeatedly hurting them doesn’t care enough to protect them.
There is no reciprocity in this unhealthy relationship.
One person is treating the other well and the other definitely is not.
When a person continually hurts you get out of that relationship.
3. When a person makes you feel bad about who you are
If a relationship makes you feel bad about yourself you need to get out.
Be careful of people who talk you out of being you.
A person who loves you should celebrate you. They shouldn’t try and change you or morph you into their version of who they want you to be. They shouldn’t control you by making you see and do things their way only.
The longer I remained with my husband the worse I felt about myself.
It was two-fold.
My husband needed our world to operate under his worldview. This meant things that were important to me were not important to him. Unless he agreed with me. It made me feel neglected, lonely, and unfulfilled. I tolerated it and still felt good about myself. Until it went on for too many years.
I woke up one day and had sacrificed myself for another human being.
Relationships require sacrifice, don’t mistake that for sacrificing all of yourself.
The continual battles and negotiations with my husband wore me down. They brought out an uglier side of me as arguments often do. His drinking escalated this. I said the kinda things even four walls shouldn’t hear.
Remaining in an unhealthy relationship makes us lose our only healthy.
I didn’t like my behavior and it made me feel even worse about myself.
When a person makes you feel bad about who you are you need to run.
4. When you lose the best parts of yourself
When you lose the better parts of yourself get out of a relationship.
In the early years of my marriage, I was shedding myself unconsciously. I was abandoning what was most important to me for what my husband wanted.
If he wanted me to leave my job to build a business with him I did it.
If he didn’t like vacationing at the beach I grew up going to we didn’t go. If he wanted the expense of a big wedding, not a house we had the big wedding. If he didn’t want me to take my cat from my mom, I didn’t take my cat.
That last one is a hard pill to swallow. I thought it was temporary. I thought I was going to be able to take my cat once we moved into a house. It’s a long story. One that is too painful for me to tell.
I wasn’t a shrinking violet. I believed I was compromising. I believed I was working as two, not one. I believed relationships were a team sport. My husband did not.
I was someone who was intrinsically a fixer.
I just kept trying to navigate around what made him happy.
But unconsciously losing myself turned into consciously losing myself.
When our marital struggles worsened, I lost my great Joie de vivre. I had always been a massively happy girl. I lost my sense of humor. I began to vent. I lost all of the best things about myself.
Because I stayed in an unhealthy marriage for too long.
If you are losing the best parts of yourself get out of that relationship.
5. When you feel continually ignored and frustrated
When you feel habitually ignored and frustrated you should leave a relationship.
One day my ten-year-old son walked into the kitchen. His Father and I were having a discussion. Once his Dad left the kitchen he looked at me with bewilderment.
“Mom,” he said. “Why do you talk to Dad? It’s the same conversation over and over again. Dad can’t hear you.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
My little boy was able to see his Father didn’t care to listen to or hear me.
He recognized the circular arguments that made me feel frustrated and crazy. It wasn’t a particular topic. It was any topic my husband disagreed with.
The conversation would just go round and round.
There was no beginning and no end.
I would just move on. I would spend my time trying to talk to my husband and plead my case. I would do it again shortly thereafter. I might try again a week later. I might cry. I might get made.
But eventually, I had no choice but to move on because he didn’t care.
There would be no compromise or resolution.
It made me completely miserable.
When you feel continually ignored and frustrated it’s time to run.
We can love someone but it won’t make them treat us well.
We can tolerate poor behavior but it won’t end well for us.
A healthy relationship is about how we feel when we are with the one we love.
Anything less than great isn’t acceptable. It’s a personal sacrifice of all that we are. A healthy relationship has ebbs and flows. It has ups and downs. It has good times and bad times.
It’s imperfect.
But it’s not unhealthy.
I once wrote, “We indulge in the ugliness of failing relationships when we should be rescuing our own individual beauty. So that at least one of the two survive.”
There’s a difference between giving and giving ourselves away.
How Do You Know When It’s Time to End a Relationship With Someone You Love?
These 5 things are an indicator you should run
We make relationships more complicated than they are. It’s like parenting. If only we stuck to a few cardinal rules it would be easier. But we get bogged down in the day-to-day and exhaustion wears us down.
We’re trying to do it all.
We’re trying to keep it all together.
I’ve spent more than a decade in the counseling and research of love and relationships. I am a marketer, journalist, and former business columnist turned relationship columnist.
My crumbling marriage took a deep dive.
Out of necessity, it transitioned me into a relationship expert.
We spend a great deal of time focusing on the one we love. We put all of our energy into them. We view our relationships by how we feel about our significant other.
We love them.
But my psychologist marriage counselor once gave me great advice.
“A healthy love relationship is not gauged by how I feel about him/her,” he said. “But how I feel about me when I am with him/her.”
I wrote about it more in this article, “You Need to Ask Yourself This One Relationship Question.” It’s worth the read because it’s extremely clarifying. It takes you out of the day-to-day relationship and into the core principles of what is healthy and what is unhealthy.
I’ve written the following 5 indicators as a supplement to this piece.
5 Things that are indicators you should run from your relationship.
1. When your spouse makes your life feel out of control
If your world feels out of control it’s a signal to get out of your relationship.
Even before my severe marital problems began, my husband made my world feel out of control. It wasn’t a daily, weekly, or monthly constant. It was when he disagreed with me, I needed something from him, or something was important to me.
He became unpredictable.
Would he not show up for an important charity event I had planned? Would he not speak to me for days? Would he intentionally ruin my birthday or a holiday? Would he show up without stopping to purchase what I told him I needed? Would he leave me without a ride after surgery?
The circumstances were fluid and would change.
But his degree of uncertainty and unpredictability would not.
My husband would make sure he passive-aggressively sabotaged, negatively impacted, or completely ruined anything he disagreed with.
He would make it clear he was the one in control.
When our marriage worsened, he began uncharacteristically drinking. It amplified the sense that my world felt out of control. No matter what I did he would control me. If he couldn’t hurt me any longer then he would drink abusively and upset me that way.
Making my world out of control reinforced his control.
When a person makes your life feel out of control get away from them.
2. When a person makes you beg them to care or stop hurting you
You shouldn’t have to repeatedly tell someone they are negatively impacting you.
When you have to ask somebody to care about you, they’re already telling you they don’t. If you are being hurt in the same manner over and over again it’s time to get out of your relationship.
Generally speaking, we tolerate this because it becomes a cyclical narrative.
We become immune to the circular arguments we have with our spouses.
We also tolerate it because overly caring people can be enablers. Enablers are extremely caring individuals who will tolerate repeatedly bad behavior, make excuses for the one they love, and remain in a bad situation.
Enablers do this because they believe they are being kind.
They believe they are being loyal and devoted. They believe they are protecting the one they love. They can believe if they leave something worse could happen. They convince themselves, for instance, if they leave a drinker the drinker might not be safe.
Enablers are the king and queens of excuses.
They justify the bad behavior of someone they love.
They will say things like, “I know he was mean but he’s stressed at work. I know she’s behaving badly but she’s going through a hard time. I know he shouldn’t make me cry but he doesn’t mean to. I know she’s out of control but she’s a good person.”
The irony?
While the enabler is putting the one they love on a pedestal. While the enabler is giving the one they love every benefit of the doubt in the book. While the enable is tolerating the intolerable. While the enabler is protecting their significant other.
The person repeatedly hurting them doesn’t care enough to protect them.
There is no reciprocity in this unhealthy relationship.
One person is treating the other well and the other definitely is not.
When a person continually hurts you get out of that relationship.
3. When a person makes you feel bad about who you are
If a relationship makes you feel bad about yourself you need to get out.
Be careful of people who talk you out of being you.
A person who loves you should celebrate you. They shouldn’t try and change you or morph you into their version of who they want you to be. They shouldn’t control you by making you see and do things their way only.
The longer I remained with my husband the worse I felt about myself.
It was two-fold.
My husband needed our world to operate under his worldview. This meant things that were important to me were not important to him. Unless he agreed with me. It made me feel neglected, lonely, and unfulfilled. I tolerated it and still felt good about myself. Until it went on for too many years.
I woke up one day and had sacrificed myself for another human being.
Relationships require sacrifice, don’t mistake that for sacrificing all of yourself.
The continual battles and negotiations with my husband wore me down. They brought out an uglier side of me as arguments often do. His drinking escalated this. I said the kinda things even four walls shouldn’t hear.
Remaining in an unhealthy relationship makes us lose our only healthy.
I didn’t like my behavior and it made me feel even worse about myself.
When a person makes you feel bad about who you are you need to run.
4. When you lose the best parts of yourself
When you lose the better parts of yourself get out of a relationship.
In the early years of my marriage, I was shedding myself unconsciously. I was abandoning what was most important to me for what my husband wanted.
If he wanted me to leave my job to build a business with him I did it.
If he didn’t like vacationing at the beach I grew up going to we didn’t go. If he wanted the expense of a big wedding, not a house we had the big wedding. If he didn’t want me to take my cat from my mom, I didn’t take my cat.
That last one is a hard pill to swallow. I thought it was temporary. I thought I was going to be able to take my cat once we moved into a house. It’s a long story. One that is too painful for me to tell.
I wasn’t a shrinking violet. I believed I was compromising. I believed I was working as two, not one. I believed relationships were a team sport. My husband did not.
I was someone who was intrinsically a fixer.
I just kept trying to navigate around what made him happy.
But unconsciously losing myself turned into consciously losing myself.
When our marital struggles worsened, I lost my great Joie de vivre. I had always been a massively happy girl. I lost my sense of humor. I began to vent. I lost all of the best things about myself.
Because I stayed in an unhealthy marriage for too long.
If you are losing the best parts of yourself get out of that relationship.
5. When you feel continually ignored and frustrated
When you feel habitually ignored and frustrated you should leave a relationship.
One day my ten-year-old son walked into the kitchen. His Father and I were having a discussion. Once his Dad left the kitchen he looked at me with bewilderment.
“Mom,” he said. “Why do you talk to Dad? It’s the same conversation over and over again. Dad can’t hear you.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
My little boy was able to see his Father didn’t care to listen to or hear me.
He recognized the circular arguments that made me feel frustrated and crazy. It wasn’t a particular topic. It was any topic my husband disagreed with.
The conversation would just go round and round.
There was no beginning and no end.
I would just move on. I would spend my time trying to talk to my husband and plead my case. I would do it again shortly thereafter. I might try again a week later. I might cry. I might get made.
But eventually, I had no choice but to move on because he didn’t care.
There would be no compromise or resolution.
It made me completely miserable.
When you feel continually ignored and frustrated it’s time to run.
We can love someone but it won’t make them treat us well.
We can tolerate poor behavior but it won’t end well for us.
A healthy relationship is about how we feel when we are with the one we love.
Anything less than great isn’t acceptable. It’s a personal sacrifice of all that we are. A healthy relationship has ebbs and flows. It has ups and downs. It has good times and bad times.
It’s imperfect.
But it’s not unhealthy.
I once wrote, “We indulge in the ugliness of failing relationships when we should be rescuing our own individual beauty. So that at least one of the two survive.”
There’s a difference between giving and giving ourselves away.
