Why We Stay When We Know It's Time to Leave

My intuition told me I shouldn’t marry him. I saw the signs. I had doubts. I had that persistent feeling that something wasn’t right.

And I chose to do it anyway. That’s the part I’ve thought about the most.

Not Why did I marry the wrong person? But Why didn’t I listen to myself?

It’s easy to look backward at a decision that didn’t work and see that it was obvious. The red flags were there. The signs were there. But knowing something and being willing to act on it are two very different things.

And this isn’t just about relationships.

Maybe you’ve stayed in a job longer than you should have.

Maybe you’ve stayed in a friendship that ran its course.

Maybe you’ve lived somewhere you’ve outgrown because leaving meant starting over.

Or maybe you’ve kept trying to make something work because you’ve already invested so much into it.

I’ve done all of these in different ways.

Familiarity can look a lot like compatibility.

When something becomes familiar enough, it can be surprisingly difficult to tell the difference between something that is right for you and something that you’ve simply gotten used to.

Sometimes you can’t just leave.

This is where I think a lot of advice about making big life changes falls short.

We love simple advice: If you know it’s wrong, leave.

But life isn’t always simple. Sometimes it required patience in order to protect something we value. And sometimes staying is simply based in fear and obligation.

Sometimes the thing we’re afraid to leave isn’t even the thing we’re holding onto.

For me, leaving my marriage meant admitting that I had been wrong. It meant grieving a second family I’d become part of. It meant untangling a life we’d built together. And it meant accepting that loving someone wasn’t enough to make us compatible.

I wish I’d understood that sooner.

Listen to Episode 4 of Look Who It Is: Why We Stay When We Know It’s Time to Leave.

And then think about your own life.

What have you stayed in longer than you should have?

And what were you really afraid of losing?