The School of Life - Stay or Leave: How to remain in, or end, your relationship

STAY OR LEAVE

Published in 2021 by The School of Life
First published in the USA in 2021
70 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AB

Copyright The School of Life 2021
Cover design by Marcia Mihotich
Printed in Latvia by Livonia

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without express prior consent of the publisher.

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The School of Life is a resource for helping us understand ourselves, for improving our relationships, our careers and our social lives as well as for helping us find calm and get more out of our leisure hours. We do this through creating films, workshops, books and gifts.

www.theschooloflife.com
eISBN 978-1-912891-75-7

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STAY OR LEAVE

The School of Life

At points, in despair at yet more agonising uncertainty about whether it would be best to stay in or to leave a relationship, we might find ourselves harbouring a curious longing: that the relationship could be even worse than it is. If, for example, our partner had done something obviously and egregiously appalling, if they were cataclysmically unpleasant and we were unable to stand a single minute more in their presence in short, if we despised them and they us it would at least be clear what we should do next.

But our situation is typically complicated by a strange set of facts: that we continue to like our partner at times; that we laugh together, that we maintain respect, that they looked very charming the other night, that we think them impressive in company and that theyre superior to ninetynine percent of the people who cross our path day to day. Maddeningly, try as we might, we cant hate them.

At the same time, we cant rest easy with them either. Whenever we start to relax into the relationship, whenever we finally believe that this could, after all, be the future till the end, something happens to remind us that it cant go on, that this is a fundamentally hopeless situation, that we have to get out while there is still time, that we cant continue to overlook what is wrong between us. It might be the physical relationship or the lack of emotional connection, their refusal to tackle certain inner issues, a maddening argumentativeness or an absence of warmth or joy. Whatever it may be, the reality is that this is a dysfunctional relationship; we only need to see a properly happy couple to be reminded of all that is humiliatingly amiss.

Stay-or-leave is a lonely place. Society has a lot of patience for people who have been left, and a decent amount of prurient interest in those who are hooking up, but this zone of confusion and ambivalence can feel at once distasteful and tedious. To most of the world, we simply have to put up a brave front and shut up; they largely have no clue how much we ruminate and what pain were in. We pull a wan smile when they compliment us on our partner and say how happy we look together at the moment (the verdict normally comes just after a particularly grave crisis). Its exhausting to have to pretend to this extent. It may be 3 a.m. before we can look the choice in the eye and feel its full horror staring back.

There may be very few people to whom we can turn. Trusted confidants can be surprisingly thin on the ground; friends may try to hurry us out of the relationship or keep us unnaturally fixed. Behind their advice, we sense their own agendas and experiences muddying the waters.

This book is an attempt to help us out of our inertia. We may be seeking permission to do something weve been longing to do for a while, and hope that a book might provide us with legitimacy. But there may also be cases where the idea of leaving, clearly delineated, provokes disagreement and a fresh appetite for hope and commitment. The best way for us to discover our own taste may be to see what we agree with here and what might provoke spontaneous cries of protest.

After reading this book, we may decide that we do want to stay. Or we may discover that we must have a conversation to end matters in the coming days. Whichever way it goes, what we can hope for above all is resolution. We cannot continue in painful ambivalence indefinitely: we need either to recommit to love (in some form or other) or to abandon it with kindness. At best, either we will stay and now have some firm reasons for doing so, or we will leave, but with a minimum of doubt and a cap on our regrets.

This book is a tool that carries the promise of the clearer and less compromised future we deserve.

We live in a culture that firmly suggests that the essence of true love is for one person fully to accept the other, as we like to put it, just as they are. In moments of quiet intimacy, the most romantic thing one could ever hear from a partner is, apparently, I wouldnt change a thing about you, just as the most bitter and disappointed enquiry one could ever throw at a lover in a declining relationship would be: Why cant you accept me as I am?

If things do end, we can be guaranteed to garner substantial sympathy from friends and onlookers by explaining that we left because they wanted us to change.

It sounds almost plausible until we pause and modestly remember what the human animal is: a largely demented, broken, agitated, blind, deluded and barely evolved primate. We are, each one of us, and with nothing derogatory being meant by the term, really rather mad. We are the inheritors of peculiar childhoods; we over-and under-react in a shifting set of areas; we fail to understand key aspects of reality; we get other people wildly wrong; we are unsure of our future; many of our judgements are questionable, and a lot of the time we have no idea what is going on.

Against such a background, to insist that there would be nothing about a person that one should want to change, that to be asked to change would be an offence, that we should be loved just as we are feels like the height of arrogance and unreasonableness. Given the facts of human nature, how could we be anything other than profoundly, tirelessly committed to changing a bit here and there? How could we not be embarrassed by who we were last year, let alone right now? How could we not embrace the idea of a lover kindly proffering suggestions as to how we might evolve?

Its time to redefine a functioning adult. This isnt someone who bristles at the idea of change, gently suggested; its someone who welcomes it as a path to redemption. The true adult knows they need to grow up. The truly healthy person knows they are ill (we all are). Conversely, the people who really need to change are those who think they dont need to change at all, and who say its your problem when you float the idea. They become furious with you for even suggesting the concept and storm off, calling you weird or intense.