RELATIONSHIPS
The Difference Between Quitting and Knowing When It’s Over
I listened to clients hold on to men out of fear and shame, insisting their worth is tethered to their ability to “keep a man.”
One of the most valuable skills I picked up early in my life is how to leave. Of all the things my mother did wrong, one of the few things she did right was showing me how to walk away from people, places, and ideals even and especially after holding onto them for too long. In her sociopathic way, she taught me about the fallacy of sunken costs. Even though she’s best known for throwing people away when she’s the one who has erred against them, I have always taken her ability to walk away as a helpful trait when properly applied.
I don’t leave people I love easily. I’m a homebody, a creature of habit who often finds my home in others. I stay in bad relationships and friendships longer than I should and have always suffered because of it. However, I leave when I get tired of suffering, giving people the benefit of the doubt, and trying to fix what has gone wrong. I leave in a big way, in a whirl of dust and shards, never to return.
For nearly two years, I’ve been alone. I have been detoxing from the people who have hurt me, including my partner of more than five years. In this time, I have come away from friends I’ve known for decades as the pandemic and political climate shined a light on our core differences and beliefs. I have spent twenty-one months taking care of myself without distractions and without someone else conditioning me to believe I don’t deserve more than I’ve been given. I am no longer taking people as they are if it means demeaning myself to meet them. It feels good to be here, to be this alone, and this unwilling to bend.
I began my career as a Personal Performance and Life Mastery Coach by happenstance. After writing books and speaking openly about my life experiences and my road to managing my past and present trauma, women from all walks of life were drawn to me. Soon came the questions and requests for advice on handling everything from homelessness to rape, domestic abuse, and sexual shaming––all of which I have experienced. Then came questions about money and business, and soon, I was helping women with their finances, creditworthiness, earning more money in their careers, or switching careers altogether. Of course, we talked about familial and romantic relationships as well, but only as a means to an end. Once we can put our relationships in perspective, it helps us focus on all other aspects of our lives.
Since the pandemic, however, I have recognized a change in my coaching clients. Before Covid, my clients and I focused on “getting their shit together.” My clients are women, many of whom earn six-figure incomes and have worked hard to afford the lifestyle they wanted and deserve. However, many of them are over thirty-five and single, choosing to focus on their educations and professions more than personal relationships. Overall, though all my clients date, have live-in partners, or are even married, their main focus always seemed to be on being self-sufficient, happy, and fulfilled, with or without partners. But, now, all of that has changed.
Over the past year, most of our sessions have focused on romantic relationships––either finding, leaving, or holding on to a partner. Women in their thirties who, two years ago, were focused on buying property and moving up in the companies where they work are now panicking about finding love and having babies before they’re forty. It seems as if the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns made some women even more afraid of dying alone. Initially, I was stunned to hear them repeating old-fashioned tropes about being “old” in their mid-thirties and no longer being able to have children or no one wanting them once they’ve reached the big four-oh. Naturally, as a woman in her forties, I had some news for them.
This year, I have imparted wisdom and strategies I have learned from recent personal experiences. Most prominently, I have taught my clients how to leave. I wasn’t shocked to hear them cry about cheating partners while being determined to “make it work.” I wasn’t shocked to hear clients making excuses for verbally or emotionally abusive men, blaming their partners’ behavior on long work hours or outside stressors. I wasn’t shocked that clients have found themselves in legal battles and precarious professional positions because of emotional triggers tripped by cheating significant others. I wasn’t shocked to hear the denial––smart, self-sufficient, degreed professional women refusing to see how long and hard they are being dragged by the men in their lives. I wasn’t shocked because I’d been there.
I listened to clients doing what I have always done––holding on to men out of fear and shame, with the resounding chants of the society around them insisting their worth is tethered to their ability to “keep a man.” I listened to them repeat the advice given by broken aunties and grandmothers who stayed with their partners no matter how many times they were disrespected by the men they loved. I listened to my clients repeat cycles and settle for less, determined to hold onto dreams that were no longer holding onto them, afraid to quit, not realizing it’s already over. I listened to the sound of their desperate, over thirty-year-old flesh being dragged across the gravel on an unpaved road carved out by patriarchal and puritanical sunk cost fallacies.
I listened to the echoes of a generation far gone but never lost. “Stay with him, no matter what he does, no matter how awful he makes you feel. Stay, and let him do it again and again and again until there is nothing left of you. Stay until he’s killed you inside or out. Stay. Stay. Stay.”
No one is coming to save you. The life you have is the life you have chosen, and if you want something different, there is nothing to do but choose again. But, new choices never include old options, and that’s the thing that scares us all. We can’t take everyone we love to our next level or new destination. Friends, family, and significant others who have hurt us will have to fall by the wayside. To leave, we will have to remind ourselves not to cling to a mistake just because we have spent a long time making it. We’ll have to remember that if we want something we’ve never had, we’ll have to do something we’ve never done. We have to look back at all we have outgrown and be okay with the fact that we’re not done growing, and we are bound to outgrow some of the people, places, notions, and ideals we love.
To leave, we have to be comfortable in our skins. We have to love ourselves in a way we never have before. We have to care for ourselves, be gentle and forgive ourselves. We have to look at ourselves naked and broken and still love what we see. We have to love ourselves enough to make ourselves better than we are today. To leave, we have to be willing to do the work because the pain of leaving is but a fraction of the pain we feel when we stay. We have to have faith because faith and fear cannot exist in the same place at the same time, and we can only choose one. We have to leave when people tell us to, either with their words or actions. We have to believe who they are when they show us and stop giving people a million chances to hurt our feelings and wound our hearts. We have to know when it’s over. We have to know that broken trust can never be repaired because the heart will always remember where it has been broken. We have to know that walking away and saving ourselves is not quitting. It’s the win we need. We have to know that leaving isn’t easy, but it is always worth it, and so are we. This is what I tell my clients. This is what I tell myself.
As the new year approaches, I have pivoted my practice to focus on helping people leave through break-up coaching and self-love strategies. After the year we’ve had, fraught with desperation, isolation, and the clamoring to not be forgotten or left behind in the aftermath of what is no doubt an apocalypse, many of my clients have lost the strength to advocate for themselves in and out of their relationships. And apropos of everything, I’ve just gained mine.
