The Fear of Ending a Relationship

Let's imagine that we know what we want, to leave a relationship, but that we're suffering from a problem which inhibits us from acting on our wishes.

We can't bear to cause another person pain, especially another person towards whom we feel a sense of loyalty, who's been kind to us, who looks up to us for their safety and their future, who has expectations of us and with whom we might have been planning a trip together to another continent in a few months.

Perhaps we've come near to telling them on a dozen occasions, but always pulled back at the very last moment.

We tell ourselves that we'll get around to it after the holidays, or once their birthday party's over, or next year, or in the morning, and yet the deadlines roll by and we are still here.

Our discomfort has to do with the thought of unleashing an appalling upset.

They will dissolve into tears, there will be sobbing which may last a very long time, there will be wailing, uncontrollable cries and mountains of wet tissues.

All because of a truth that currently lurks in the quiet recesses of our cranium.

We will have been responsible for dragging a formerly competent and independent person into chaos.

It's more than we can bear.

It sounds peculiar, but it might almost be better for us to spend the next few decades unfulfilled than experience even five minutes of unbounded upset.

In another part of our minds, there may also be a terror.

More than we realise day to day, we're scared of our partner.

By telling them it's over, we risk a discharge of titanic anger.

They may scream at us, accuse us of leading them on, of being a charlatan and a disgrace.

There might be violence and danger.

there is a certain symmetry to our fears.

We may tell them and by doing so kill them.

Or we may tell them and they will turn around and kill us, kill or be killed.

No wonder we put off the news.

The reasonable adult part of our minds knows that these fears of killing and dying can't really be true, but this may weigh very little in how we unconsciously feel.

wielding sensible arguments can, at points, be as effective as telling a person with vertigo that the balcony won't collapse, or a person with depression that there are perfectly good grounds to be cheerful.

A lot of our mind is not amenable to hard-headed logic.

In an ancestral part of us, we simply operate with a sense that going against the wishes of a significant person will mean either endangering their lives or our own.

Let's imagine that we know what we want, to leave a relationship, but that we're suffering from a problem which inhibits us from acting on our wishes.

We can't bear to cause another person pain, especially another person towards whom we feel a sense of loyalty, who's been kind to us, who looks up to us for their safety and their future, who has expectations of us and with whom we might have been planning a trip together to another continent in a few months.

Perhaps we've come near to telling them on a dozen occasions, but always pulled back at the very last moment.

We tell ourselves that we'll get around to it after the holidays, or once their birthday party's over, or next year, or in the morning, and yet the deadlines roll by and we are still here.

Our discomfort has to do with the thought of unleashing an appalling upset.

They will dissolve into tears, there will be sobbing which may last a very long time, there will be wailing, uncontrollable cries and mountains of wet tissues.

All because of a truth that currently lurks in the quiet recesses of our cranium.

We will have been responsible for dragging a formerly competent and independent person into chaos.

It's more than we can bear.

It sounds peculiar, but it might almost be better for us to spend the next few decades unfulfilled than experience even five minutes of unbounded upset.

In another part of our minds, there may also be a terror.

More than we realise day to day, we're scared of our partner.

By telling them it's over, we risk a discharge of titanic anger.

They may scream at us, accuse us of leading them on, of being a charlatan and a disgrace.

There might be violence and danger.

there is a certain symmetry to our fears.

We may tell them and by doing so kill them.

Or we may tell them and they will turn around and kill us, kill or be killed.

No wonder we put off the news.

The reasonable adult part of our minds knows that these fears of killing and dying can't really be true, but this may weigh very little in how we unconsciously feel.

wielding sensible arguments can, at points, be as effective as telling a person with vertigo that the balcony won't collapse, or a person with depression that there are perfectly good grounds to be cheerful.

A lot of our mind is not amenable to hard-headed logic.

In an ancestral part of us, we simply operate with a sense that going against the wishes of a significant person will mean either endangering their lives or our own.