Kirshenbaum, Mira - Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay

I don’t need to tell you that what lies ahead of you will be an adventure. It might not even be necessary for me to do so: you might be way ahead of me in your sense of excitement and anticipation thinking about your new life. If you’re not so sure, listen to people who’ve been through what you’re going through now. The same message keeps coming up over and over:

• “I didn’t know if I’d make it, but I’m in a much better place than I was or than I’d ever thought I’d be in.”

• “It was hard, but I stayed connected to people and things I cared about and I’m glad I did it.”

• “I can’t believe how much I’ve learned about myself and how many new things I’ve gotten for myself.”

And if that’s not what you say about an adventure, then I don’t know what is.

Good luck and congratulations. Now you finally can liberate yourself from your relationship, free of confusion, free of pain, free at last to get on with a new and better life.

IF YOUR RELATIONSHIP Is TOO GOOD TO LEAVE

Many people have mixed feelings when they discover that they will be happiest staying. On some level, it means recommitting to a relationship that you’ve thought about leaving. You might be extremely relieved to hear that your relationship is too good to leave, but you might also be afraid of settling for something that was clearly unsatisfactory enough to make you ambivalent about it.

So you may very well be feeling intimidated at the thought of staying. But it’s important to understand this feeling. It’s not a sign that you’ve made a mistake in discovering that you’ll be happiest if you stay. It’s just a natural response any of us have in the face of a difficult task. It’s your way of acknowledging the fact that your ambivalence has allowed you to avoid dealing with some of the problems in your relationship. That’s one of the things that made ambivalence so insidiously attractive: it got you off the hook.

But all this really means is that you have your work cut out for you: the work that comes from accepting that you can no longer merely wait for things to get better by themselves. This relationship is the relationship for you, and like every other thing in your life it will give back to you only what you give to it.

Now it really does make sense for you to work on your relationship. The guidelines that pointed toward staying said that most people who answered the way you did were happy they stayed and unhappy they left. So you will be happy if you stay. There are no guarantees in life, but that’s where I’d place my bet.

You’ll find your relationship improves faster than you might think when you say good-bye to your ambivalence. Your energy is in a completely different place now. None of it is being used up thinking about whether you should stay. It’s as if you’ve been living in a messy house and had been using all your time and energy looking for a new house. Imagine if that time and energy were now liberated for fixing your house up. It would be a pleasure to live in fairly quickly. In the same way, all the energy you’ve used thinking about whether you should stay is now available to make your relationship better.

What does that mean in practice? It means being smart and it means being loving. The loving part’s not complicated. You’re nice to your partner. You do for her the kinds of things you’d want her to do for you. You discover the kinds of things she wants that you might not think of yourself and you do them, too.

Being smart’s a little harder, of course. That you’ve been iffy about your relationship means that there were some problems in it, although not necessarily any more problems than in most relationships. So being smart means addressing those problems and going some of the way toward resolving them.

Let me make a suggestion. Use some of the energy that’s been liberated now that you’re no longer ambivalent to read and put into practice the material in some excellent books on how to make relationships feel better and work better. Here are some books that people find helpful and that I feel comfortable recommending:

Divorce Busting by Michele Weiner-Davis (Fireside, 1993).

This book gives you a lot to do, but it’s worth it.

Intimate Partners by Maggie Scarf (Ballantine, 1987). This

book provides helpful understanding and perspective

about what goes on in a relationship.

Lifemates by Harold Bloomfield and Sira Vittese, with Robert

Kory (Signet, 1992). There’s a lot of practical help here

for strengthening relationships.

Love Is a Verb by Bill O’Hanlon and Pat Hudson (Norton,

1995). This book helpfully steers you toward solutions

and away from analysis paralysis.

But don’t feel you need to limit yourself. Your bookstore and library shelves have plenty of other books you might find useful.

And if you haven’t tried couples therapy before, this might be a perfect time to start.

Well, that’s it. You’re off to live your life and have the relationship you wanted. But now there’s a big difference. You know there’s a satisfaction-producing core in your relationship that makes it possible for it to give back to you what you give to it. The happiness you were looking for can now be yours.

Congratulations and good luck as you recommit to your relationship, free of doubt, free of holding back, free at last to pour your love and energy into your relationship and get back everything there is to get from it.

Whatever truths you’ve discovered,

this isn’t the end, it’s

THE BEGINNING

INDEX

abandonment, fear of

abuse, physical

ultimatum and

activities and interests, shared

examples of

fun and

affairs

bottom lines and

as concrete commitment to leave

damage and healing after

affection, physical, see sex and physical affection

agreements:

broken

consequences of

importance of

misunderstandings about

politeness and see also bottom lines; negotiation; power

Ahrons, Constance

alcoholism

ambivalence, relationship

balance-scale approach to, see balance-scale approach

bottom lines and

damage caused by

diagnostic approach to, see diagnostic questions

distance and

epidemic of

expressions of

friends’ advice and

self-trust and

“stuck stayers” and

as trap see also specific relationship issues

Anderson, Deborah

anger

intimacy and

arguing, see fighting; negotiation

Art of Loving, The (Fromm)

attraction, physical

balance-scale approach

post-relationship options and

therapists and

belonging together, sense of

betrayal, see hurts and betrayals

Blau, Melinda

Bloomfield, Harold

books, recommended:

to help with leaving

to help with staying