Original voice recording:

I would like to experiment, play, with writing an answer, an article, an essay, based on the question that a few people were asking in the WhatsApp group.

Around knowing when to let go of a draining relationship. What to do. Should I stay? Should I not?

Touching on times when I’ve been in that situation. When I’ve felt stuck. And what questions were helpful for me to sit in.

Firstly, what makes it that staying or leaving are the only two options?

That sounds like fear¹.

What makes it that I think I should know what to do?

If I don’t have fully aligned action, if I don’t have a deep knowing in whether I want to stay or go—what feels wrong with that?

What makes it that I have to decide?

What scares me about—what feels uncomfortable about—sitting in the “I don’t know”?²

“I don’t know, and I don’t know when I’ll know.”

What makes it that that’s a problem?

What makes it that I believe I should know?

What makes it that I believe I have responsibility for that?

And if the relationship is feeling draining, or not feeling okay in some way, how sure am I that that’s because of the relationship and not… often that’s pointing for me at… there’s something that I’m not owning.

There’s some way that I’m trying to show up in a certain way because that’s expected in the dynamic, or because that’s how I learnt I should be.

But in my experience, the draining feeling is not from something they’re doing. It’s from something that I’m not owning.

So what would it mean, instead of deciding how to change the relationship, whether to stay in the relationship or not, what would it mean to show up exactly how I would want my side of the relationship to be if it were the ideal relationship?

And let the chips fall where they fall.

What makes it that that feels icky?

What makes it that I have to have a decisive knowing in what to do rather than show up in a way that doesn’t feel draining for me, and see what happens?

For me, the thing that stops that from feeling comfortable is that I feel like I shouldn’t be showing up in that way.

That there’s something wrong with showing up in that way.

That if I show up in those ways, and they don’t like that, then I’ve done something wrong.

So where’s that messaging, that belief, coming from? And is it true, or is that a projection of things from the past?

And finally, even if I do have a knowing that the ‘right’ thing to do is to show up differently, or the ‘right’ thing to do is to end the relationship… if that’s not feeling comfortable:

Can I give myself grace that I don’t have to do anything?

What’s the part of me that thinks I’m less than if I have a belief that I should act in a certain way and then I don’t?

We’re all fallible.

We all have things that we don’t feel strong enough to do.

That’s not a weakness, that’s because somewhere inside us it doesn’t feel safe to go there.

Can we give ourselves grace for that?

Maybe it feels like that goes against my values. Values like speaking my truth.

Well, right now, your truth isn’t to leave the relationship.

If it was, that would be happening naturally.

Maybe a more accurate representation of your truth right now is that you feel like you should leave and you are too scared to do that and you don’t know how to reconcile that.

Maybe that’s your truth.

Maybe that’s what you share³.

Again, you can’t get it wrong if you’re saying what’s true for you.

So what’s stopping you from sharing that vulnerable truth? That you’re stuck, that you’re in two minds, that you don’t know what to do?

Can you take certainty⁴ in that uncertainty?

1. We live in a world of infinites. We only shrink the world down to binaries when we’re in our threat (fight/flight) state. When we believe we’re in danger unless we get it ‘right’. ↩

2. I call this ‘Delia’s dad energy’. My friend Delia talks about how confidently her dad is able to own his “I don’t know”s. It’s a beautiful trait. You don’t owe anyone any more certainty than whatever certainty you have access to in the moment. Anyone who needs more certainty from you than you have is projecting their discomfort with uncertainty onto you. ↩

3. If you share anything at all. Again, that’ll come when it feels safe to. You get to do anything, you don’t have to do anything. ↩

4. (safety) ↩