Should you end your relationship or keep trying?
When to stay and when to go.
Hi there,
There are few choices more psychologically demanding than deciding to leave a relationship. Especially if it’s not violent. Especially if there’s still love there. Especially if you’ve invested years — or decades — of your life trying to make it work.
The question of when to leave cuts to the core of identity, value, responsibility, and belief. Because at the heart of the matter is not only “Am I being fulfilled?” — but also, “Am I showing up as the kind of person I want to be in a relationship?”
Love is not a transaction — it’s a responsibility.
The mature view of a relationship is this: It is not a perpetual exchange of validation. It is a commitment to show up — especially when it’s hard — to nurture something bigger than your own ego. That means recognizing your partner’s emotional world, understanding their needs, and asking yourself how you contribute to the health or dysfunction of the dynamic.
Too many people enter relationships focused on what they can extract. Attention. Safety. Praise. But sustainable love requires more than getting — it requires giving. It requires the willingness to adapt, to evolve, to serve something beyond your temporary emotions.
A relationship requires maturity, emotional flexibility, and self-honesty. The moment it becomes a scoreboard of unmet needs — “You’re not giving me what I want ”— is the moment it begins to rot.
But there’s a crucial distinction here: Giving should never cost you your core self.
If your giving disappears into a void — if your efforts are ignored, your values dismissed, your needs minimized — then the foundation becomes unstable. If you’ve poured into the relationship, met your partner’s needs, communicated with care, and taken accountability for your side of the street — and still, nothing changes — then you’ve reached a critical inflection point.
What are your needs? Are they known? Are they met?
Every human being has needs. For safety. For affection. For respect. For meaning. For growth. And in a functional partnership, these needs are acknowledged — not perfectly, but consciously — and tended to with care and responsibility by both people.
This is not to say that all needs must be met by your partner — that would be an unfair burden. But in a healthy relationship, there’s space for both people to express what matters to them, and there’s a shared commitment to understanding and responding to those needs.
That starts with knowing what your needs are — and being honest about whether you’ve communicated them or suppressed them to keep the peace.
It also requires a difficult question: Have I made space for their needs, too?
Too often we evaluate our relationships by what we’re not getting, without reflecting on what we’re not giving.
So ask yourself:
Have I shown up with integrity?
Have I listened deeply, or only waited for what I wanted to hear?
Have I been emotionally available, or emotionally reactive?
Have I expected change without offering change?
These are not indictments. They are inquiries. And they matter, because how you show up in the relationship affects how the relationship shows up for you.
So, when is it time to leave?
Not when things get difficult. Not when you have a fight.
You leave when the relationship asks you to become someone you’re not proud of. When the dynamic punishes growth. When your dignity’s at stake. When you shrink a little more each year, just to keep the peace.
You leave when emotional safety has been replaced with emotional survival. When the cost of staying is a slow erosion of your values, your vibrancy, and your future.
It’s not a decision to make impulsively. It requires discernment. Emotional sobriety. You must ask yourself:
Have I done the work to improve the relationship?
Have I taken responsibility for my side?
Have I communicated clearly and with respect?
Have I compromised so much that I’ve lost myself?
And then, the real question: If nothing changed, would I be willing to live like this for the next ten years?
If the answer is no, you already have your answer.
You are not required to sacrifice your soul to maintain an attachment. You are not required to abandon yourself for a relationship. You are allowed to change.
Relationships are not prisons. They are places for truth, mutual respect, and shared vision. When any of those things dissolve, so does the structure.
You are obligated to honor your truth. That might mean staying and rebuilding from a deeper foundation. Or it might mean walking away — with courage. Either path takes bravery.
Love,
Jillian
Catch up on past posts from Love Weekly
Why You Keep Going Back to the Person Who Hurt You
Have you ever found yourself back in the arms — or inbox — of someone who once shattered you? You knew better. Your friends staged interventions. Your therapist raised an eyebrow. Even your gut screamed Don’t do it! And yet, one quiet Tuesday evening, you cracked the door open again. Just a little. If this is familiar, you’re not alone. In fact, this very cycle is one of the most common — yet least understood — patterns I see in my work.
Don’t fall in love with potential.
I have tried to change and save people in my life. I’ve tried to help them out of their own pain. I’ve tried to give them the world’s strongest support scaffolding to guide them toward healthier choices. So many of us have tried to see the best in the people we date — and to guide them toward their potential. We even see them as a project — an opportunity to build something better.
When Your Life Is Not What You Thought It Would Be
Each and every one of us develops a life blueprint. It’s a combination of your beliefs, values, rules, and expectations about how life should be — and how your life is supposed to turn out. Our blueprints tell us that they are the only paths to happiness. But the reality is that most people’s lives do not end up exactly following the blueprint. And most of us have to sit with the knowledge that our lives did not turn out like they were supposed to.
Sometimes, we just need to know when to call it.
This post is about what to do when you’ve tried to make something work, and it’s just not right. It’s an action plan for understanding where things are going wrong. And it’s a set of questions to help you build your discernment about when to stay and when to just call it already.
How to reclaim your life after a divorce or a big breakup.
When a big break up happens, there’s a loss of identity on top of the pain and heartbreak. This is what I want to talk about: How to find yourself again and how to meet yourself in this new form — when you’re no longer someone’s spouse or serious partner.