the line

Do we ever know when it’s time to walk away? A job, a friendship, a relationship. This is about the last one.

tl;dr: You do not get to be sure. You get a line, and you draw it yourself.

season vs. climate

A season has an end date. A new business, a layoff, a death in the family. How someone handles a hard stretch tells you who they are.

I have a type: ambitious men. Which meant I kept finding myself in the supporting role, helping him through a demanding project and telling myself it would get better once it ended. A season. But ambition has no end date. One project ended and another started, then another. I accommodated. I stopped bringing up my own goals to leave enough room for his. Eventually I realized it wasn’t his season. It was his climate. It was his world, and I was orbiting it.

I kept waiting for enough evidence that things would change. But sometimes there is no end date. Sometimes what you think is a season is simply the climate.

I admire ambition. I also can’t build something with someone who isn’t there. I knew those concessions would eventually harden into resentment. Better to leave while I still had love for him than wait until there was none left. I deserve to be the main character too.

The answer isn’t to stop dating ambitious men. It’s to find one whose ambition includes us.

love him vs. like myself

Another thing I think about is whether I like who I am with this person. Not whether I love him. Not whether he’s a good person. Not whether the relationship looks good from the outside. Do I like myself here?

Someone can be a good person and still be wrong for you. Sometimes you love someone, admire them, and still realize you cannot build the life you want beside them.

I am ambitious too. I have hobbies, opinions, plans. I am curious and independent, with a full life of family and friends. That is who I am.

Here is who I was with him: I made plans around his schedule. I put things off waiting for him. I worried constantly about whether he was okay. I repressed my own needs until I had almost convinced myself I didn’t have any. Somewhere along the way, I became a version of myself I didn’t recognize.

I didn’t just feel lonely. I felt less like myself. Your love for someone should never supersede your respect for yourself.

What’s the point of a relationship if you still feel alone?

new fight vs. same fight

Some fights teach you something. You come out knowing something you didn’t know going in. Other fights are the same fight in a new outfit. You could say both sides yourself before either of you starts. The first kind is worth the trouble. The second kind is not.

The question isn’t whether you fight. It’s whether the fighting changes anything.

Friction is not the sign. Friction is the cost of two people being in the same room with their whole selves. Anyone telling you a good relationship is smooth has either not had one or is not in the room.

I used to bite my tongue to keep the peace. It works for a night. Then it builds something bigger underneath. I don’t do that anymore. Now I say the thing, especially when it costs me something to say it. The right relationships take it and get sturdier. The wrong ones fade on their own.

Fair trade.

certainty vs. doubt

If someone I loved came to me and said everything I have just said to myself, what would I tell her? To stay? That she was asking for too much? That every relationship has problems, and she should be more patient, more understanding, more forgiving? Or that she already knows?

We are better at seeing the line in someone else’s life. In our own, we want evidence. We want certainty. We want someone to tell us we’ve tried enough.

Some people have told me I walk away too quickly. Maybe I do. But the longer you stay on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get off. And the longer you spend going the wrong way, the less time you have to find the right one.

That doesn’t mean I judge anyone who chooses to stay longer. People aren’t ready to leave until they’re ready to leave. It’s their line to draw, not mine.

I used to want someone to tell me I’d tried enough because certainty would mean I wasn’t making a mistake. But I find that certainty doesn’t come before you leave. Sometimes you only get it afterward.

There is no threshold. No referee. No sign that says this is it. There is only the line, and you draw it yourself.

So where do you draw the line?