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  • The decision whether one should stay or leave is one of the most consequential and painful any of us ever has to make.

  • On any given day, many millions of people worldwide will be secretly turning the issue over in their minds as they go about their daily lives.

  • Their partners beside them, possibly having little clue as to the momentous decision weighing upon them.

  • The choice is perhaps more common now than it ever was.

  • We expect to be deeply happy in love, and, therefore, spend a good deal of time wondering whether our relationships are essentially normal in their sexual and psychological frustrations,

  • or are beset by unusually pathological patterns which will impel us to get out as soon as we can.

  • What films or novels we've been exposed to, the state of our friends' relationships, the degree of noise surrounding new sexually-driven dating apps,

  • not to mention how much sleep we've had can all play humblingly large roles in influencing us one way or another.

  • Awkwardly, it seems that no one else actually really minds what we end up doing, which gives the decision a degree of existential loneliness it might not always have possessed.

  • Historically, the choice was, in a sense, a good deal easier because there were simply so many stern external sanctions around not leaving:

  • religions would insist that God blessed unions and would be furious that they're being torn asunder,

  • society strongly disapproved of breakups and cast separating parties into decades of ignominy and shame.

  • And psychologists would explain that children would be deeply and permanently scarred by any termination in their parents' relationship.

  • But, one by one, these objections to quitting have fallen away;

  • religions no longer terrify us into staying, society doesn't care, and psychologists now routinely tell us that children would prefer a broken family to an unhappy one.

  • The burden of choice therefore falls squarely on us.

  • The only thing determining whether to stay or leave is how we feel, which can be a pretty hard matter indeed to work out for ourselves,

  • Our feelings having a dispirited habit of shifting and evading any efforts of rational qualification.

  • In the circumstances, it might help to have a set of questions, devil's advocate in nature, to fall back upon

  • a kind of checklist to dialogue within one's mind, in the silent hours of the morning, from the chill vantage point of the spare room couch.

  • How much of our unhappiness can be tightly attributed to this particular partner.

  • And how much might it, as we would risk discovering five years and multiple upheavals later,

  • turn out to be simply an inherent feature of any attempt to live in close proximity to another human.

  • Though it is, of course, always essentially their fault, what tiny proportion of the difficulties might we, nevertheless, be contributing to the discord?

  • In what modest way might we be a little hard to be around?

  • Consider the annoying traits in all previous partners we've had and people we've known that our current partners happen not to have,

  • what do we manage not to fight about?

  • Start to probe at any new infatuations or crushes, largely by getting to know them better.

  • Observe closely how many sexually available and intelligent people the single types around us, especially those hooked up to those new dating apps, actually manage to encounter day-to-day.

  • Try to have another conversation with your partner in which you don't accuse them of mendacity,

  • and instead simply explain, quite calmly, how you actually feel and how sad you are about quite a few things.

  • Reflect on how you'd really feel as a child, if henceforth, you were to have two tiny bedrooms, two new step-parents, and possibly a few more new half-siblings,

  • compare with the scratchy reality of the current setup.

  • Question how normal it is for any couple to have great sex after twenty-two months.

  • Ask yourself if you're ready to face the risk of perhaps achieving no more than exchanging a familiar kind of unhappiness for a new and more complex variety of unhappiness.

  • Wonder whether you really want to choose hope over experience.

  • Then, if you still have the impulse to leave, with chances of subsequent regret lessened to at least a touch, with a heavy heart, and a cautious mind, leave.

The decision whether one should stay or leave is one of the most consequential and painful any of us ever has to make.

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