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You love your partner. You do. But your relationship is feeling… well, hard.
Your connection was blissful at first. Fireworks combined with that oh-so-soothing sense that you found someone who gets you.
And then things changed. You started seeing signs that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t quite as compatible as you initially fantasized.
But you care about them. And it’s not all bad. Some sweet aspects of your relationship - the cuddles, the companionship, the sex – would be hard to give up.
You wonder, Is this just a rough patch, or is it time to end this relationship?
What if I make the wrong decision? I’m scared I’ll really regret it.
My heart goes out to you, Dear Reader. Feeling uncertain about the future of your relationship is the worst.
May this article give you the insights and tools to feel calm and clear as you navigate this difficult decision.
Here’s what we’ll explore today:
Recognizing relationship health: Assessing whether your relationship is healthy or unhealthy.
Understanding relationship conflict: Discussing what constitutes normal and excessive conflict in a relationship, including insights from John and Julie Gottman and Stan Tatkin on conflict management.
Identifying personal relationship tendencies: Considering your relationship patterns, especially regarding conflict and breakups, and your attachment style.
Communicating concerns with your partner: Offering strategies for effectively communicating your concerns and needs to your partner, emphasizing specific, concrete requests, and avoiding relationship threats.
Deciding whether to break up or stay: Providing approaches to help determine whether to commit more deeply to the relationship or to end it, including giving yourself time, setting a deadline, and not waiting for complete certainty.
But First, Disclaimers!
Before diving in, let’s ensure this article will be helpful to your specific relationship quandary.
The information that follows won’t be helpful to you if:
You are in an abusive relationship.
You have Relationship OCD (rOCD)
First and foremost, if you are in an abusive relationship, the answer to Should I stay or leave my relationship? is leave. Leave soon, and please, leave safely.
The National Domestic Abuse Hotline offers free, confidential support 24/7 for those experiencing intimate partner violence. The One Love Foundation also provides excellent resources for planning a safe breakup.
Second, if you spend hours a day obsessing about the rightness of your partner or your relationship, you may be struggling with Relationship OCD, in which case this article is not for you.
Those with rOCD identify with statements such as:
The thought that I don’t really love my partner or vice versa haunts me.
I constantly doubt my relationship.
I check and recheck whether my relationship feels “right.”
I frequently seek reassurance that my relationship is “right.”
ROCD is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that fixates on the rightness of your relationship or your partner. It includes:
Obsessions about your partner’s perceived flaws or the overall quality or temperature of the relationship.
Compulsions like checking your feelings to see if you’re in love or sexually attracted enough
Comparing your relationship to others or your past relationships
Seeking reassurance from loved ones or your partner about the rightness of your partnership
Avoiding your partner or things like sex so that your obsessions don’t get triggered.
If you identify with any of the above, I recommend reading Sheva Rajaee’s book on Relationship OCD and consulting with a skilled relationship therapist.
The rest of this article will not be beneficial and may even worsen your relationship issues if you are struggling with rOCD.
Now, caveats out of the way, let’s start at the very beginning – determining whether or not your relationship is healthy.
Identify signs that a relationship is healthy or unhealthy
Clarifying whether your relationship is healthy or unhealthy is a crucial first step to answering the question, Should I stay in or leave my relationship?
The One Love Foundation offers a wonderful list of 10 Signs of Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships, as summarized below.
As you read, which list better describes your relationship?
Signs of a Healthy Relationship
Comfortable Pace: The relationship moves at a speed that feels enjoyable for each person.
Trust: You feel confident that your partner won’t do anything to hurt you or ruin the relationship.
Honesty: You can be truthful and candid without fearing the other person's response.
Independence: You have space to be yourself outside of the relationship.
Respect: You value one another’s beliefs and opinions and love one another for who you are.
Equality: The relationship feels balanced, and both parties put roughly the same effort into caring for the connection.
Kindness: You are caring and empathetic to one another and provide comfort and support.
Taking Responsibility: Both parties own their actions and words.
Healthy Conflict: You openly and respectfully discuss issues and confront disagreements non-judgmentally.
Fun: You enjoy spending time together and bring out the best in each other.
Signs of an Unhealthy Relationship
Intensity: Your partner expresses extreme feelings and over-the-top behavior that overwhelms you.
Sabotage: When another party purposely ruins your reputation, achievements, or success.
Betrayal: Disloyalty or a partner acting in an intentionally dishonest way.
Isolation: When your partner keeps you away from friends, family, or others.
Manipulation: When the other party controls your decisions, actions, or emotions.
Guilting: When a partner makes you feel responsible for their actions or like it’s your job to keep them happy.
Belittling: Your partner does and says things to make you feel bad about yourself.
Deflecting Responsibility: Your partner repeatedly makes excuses for their unhealthy behavior.
Volatility: When the other party has extreme, unpredictable reactions that make you feel scared, confused, or intimidated.
Possessiveness: When your partner jealously tries to control who you spend time with and what you do.
I also recommend listening to our podcast episode about what to look for in a long-term partner, which reviews research about which traits in a partner correlate with long-term relationship satisfaction.
If you’ve reviewed the above lists and determined your relationship is unhealthy, you have a couple of options.
The first is to end the relationship.
The second is to speak with your partner about the issues you’re facing and attempt to salvage the relationship, possibly with the help of a trained couples therapist.
For some, recognizing they are in an unhealthy relationship is enough to motivate them to break up with their partner. For others, it feels more grey, particularly if they see a mix of healthy and unhealthy dynamics or struggle to make difficult decisions. If that’s you, read on for more tips on determining whether to stay or go when you feel uncertain about working on the relationship or calling it quits.
How much conflict is normal in a relationship?
As you consider the health of your relationship, you may wonder, How much arguing is too much in a relationship?
This may be a challenging question to answer if you grew up in a contentious household, have had few relationships, or have an insecure attachment style.
There is absolutely an upper limit when it comes to “normal” fighting. If the duration or intensity of your fights stops you from functioning in your day-to-day life, that’s too much. It’s time to get to couples therapy stat or leave the relationship.
And, as mentioned earlier, if your fights lead to physical altercations or other forms of abuse, that’s well beyond too much. Leave safely.
That said, if your fights aren’t reaching the level of abuse or stopping you from attending to your responsibilities, I encourage you to focus less on how much you’re fighting and more on the quality of your fights.
According to world-renowned relationship researchers John and Julie Gottman, generally, 69% of the problems couples face are “perpetual problems.” These are inherently unresolvable problems.
In other words, conflict and unsolvable issues are par for the course in partnership.
The Gottmans also found that one factor that separates “Relationship Masters” from “Relationship Disasters” is their ability to communicate skillfully about their perpetual problems.
So, while the amount of conflict is worth considering, how you treat one another during arguments may be even more crucial.
Relationship Masters:
Maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions during fights.
Avoid the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.
Diffuse conflict relatively quickly.
That last one comes from renowned couples therapist Stan Tatkin, who says that secure functioning couples are excellent at co-regulating when in conflict.
They use humor, touch, and other loving communication tactics to help them and their partners repair efficiently. They also titrate their arguments, dipping in and out of conflict for brief periods — in other words, they don’t fight for hours at a time, spinning one another out further.
Consider your relationship tendencies
Along with clarifying your relationship's health (including how much and how well you fight), another key to making a wise decision about your relationship is identifying your tendencies in relationships.
Do you leave relationships quickly? Would your past partners or loved ones say you opt out of relationships before giving them a proper chance?
Do you avoid conflict?
Do you tend to over-help and over-accommodate, stuffing your feelings until you eventually melt down or lash out?
Would your loved ones say you cling to relationships well past their expiration date?
Understanding your relationship patterns, especially regarding conflict and breakups, will allow you to correct for any less-than-helpful tendencies.
Acknowledging, for example, that you tend to avoid rather than face issues head-on may inspire you to take opposite action and speak up more. That way, you neither stay silently resentful nor blindside your partner with a breakup.
Be sure to consider your attachment style as it relates to your beliefs and expectations about conflict in relationships.
Avoidantly attached folx may fantasize that the “right” relationship will be easy. They fall prey to a “Unity” mindset, which is the belief that a perfect soulmate exists, someone just like them that they’ll always get along with. Such an unexamined fantasy sets them up to leave the relationship as soon as it hits a rough patch.
On the other hand, anxiously attached folx (along with empaths, adult children, and other trauma survivors) unconsciously expect to be let down by their partner, leading them to accept unacceptable levels of conflict. This, combined with a tendency to privilege their partner’s feelings and needs over their own, may prompt them to stay in toxic or unsatisfying relationships.
Most people have more than one attachment style, which means you may experience all of the above.
Once you’ve considered your tendencies, consider ways to safeguard against your modus operandi. Suggest couples therapy before ending the relationship if you have a pattern of avoiding conflict and bailing on relationships early. Or if you tend to hang onto dysfunctional relationships, bring up your concerns to your partner and identify a self-loving (i.e., shorter!) timeline for ending the relationship if things don’t improve.
Notice how both of those examples centered around addressing conflict head-on? Perhaps the most powerful tool you can utilize while deciding whether to stay or go is honest communication with your partner.
Share your concerns with your partner
Before seriously considering ending your relationship, give your partner a chance to fix the things that bother you.
Unless you’re 100% clear that you can’t continue the relationship, don’t blindside your boyfriend or girlfriend with a breakup. They deserve a heads-up and a chance to address the issues at play.
As a dating coach, I often encourage my single clients to speak up early and often in budding relationships. Communicating desires and boundaries as much as possible from the start of a relationship is an excellent way to assess compatibility quickly.
For example, a match from Bumble asks you out to a local wine bar, but you don’t drink. Instead of swallowing that fact, you might ask to meet at an alternate location and then notice how they respond.
Do they respect and appreciate your open communication? Or do they make a snide comment about how dates are less fun without a drink? Either way, you have excellent data about what kind of partner they’d be.
I suspect you’re not at the start of your relationship, but that doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance to share your boundaries and needs with your partner. Sharing concerns is one of your greatest leverage points for salvaging your relationship.
But how? you ask? Great question.
How to bring concerns up
Whether at the start of your relationship or years in, sharing misgivings with a partner skillfully can feel daunting. Let’s review some practical tools for doing just that.
Make specific, concrete requests: When giving your partner feedback, avoid vague statements like, You’re really messy, and I need it to stop. Instead, make specific, concrete requests. For example, Would you be willing to put your shoes in the closet when you come over?
Try the following formula: When you ______(objectively described behavior), I feel ______(emotion). Would you be willing to ________(specific, concrete request)? For example, When you leave dirty dishes in the sink while staying at my apartment, I feel annoyed and anxious about what it would be like to share a home. Would you be willing to wash your dishes and otherwise pick up after yourself when you stay with me?
Don’t threaten the relationship unnecessarily: If you realize your relationship is hitting up against an as-of-yet-unnamed dealbreaker, let your partner know directly. Beyond that, though, avoid making statements that suggest you’re one foot in and one foot out. This is a common tactic that insecurely attached folx use (usually unconsciously) in the heat of an argument when they feel hurt, abandoned, or unheard. For example, I don’t know if I can be in a relationship with someone who isn’t as clean as I am. While this can be an easy place to go when feeling vulnerable, such statements only destabilize the relationship, likely producing more behaviors you don’t want.
Avoid communication pitfalls: follow fair fighting rules, especially I-Statements. Avoid name-calling and the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Consider couples therapy: A skilled relationship therapist can help you honestly communicate with your partner about your misgivings. They can also help you decide whether your relationship issues are manageable and, if so, how.
How to Decide Whether to Break Up or Stay
Still confused about whether to break up or commit to your relationship?
If you’ve assessed the health of your relationship, identified your relationship tendencies, and communicated your concerns to your partner but still feel ambivalent, these approaches can help you clarify whether to stay or go.
Give yourself time: Deciding whether to commit more deeply to or break up with your partner is a complex decision. Don’t rush it. Expect this to be a decision you make over time through mindful self-inquiry, both on your own and in the presence of others. Allow yourself to collect enough information over time to make the best decision possible.
Set a deadline: While some need more time to decide whether to stay or break up, others benefit from limiting how long they remain in limbo. Set a decision deadline, especially if you tend to stay in relationships too long.
Don’t wait for certainty: If you’re waiting until you feel 100% confident about staying or leaving, you’re holding yourself to an impossible standard. Most people feel at least slightly ambivalent when making major life decisions; after all, the stakes are high, and it’s impossible to know the future. Permit yourself to take action even if you feel less than sure. Try aiming for 75% certainty, not perfection.
Identify what you’re looking for in a partner: Zoom out for a moment – what do you envision for your love life? Who is your ideal mate, and how different are they from your current partner? One way to explore this is by listening to our episode on what to look for in a long-term partner and completing our Partner Guide.
Introspect with support: Use structured practices such as journaling, meditation, making art, and gentle movement to connect with your feelings and concerns about the relationship. Whether solo or with the support of a friend or therapist, take the time to both think and feel without filtering.
Ask for honest feedback: Love is blind; sometimes, getting an outside perspective is essential. Ask your friends, family, or therapist for feedback about your relationship. Don’t just ask them do you like my partner? Go deeper. Ask, What do you notice about me when I’m with my partner? Does our relationship seem healthy? If you were in my shoes, would you stay or go? Since some people are hesitant to give honest feedback, reassure them you want to hear their candid thoughts (and when they give them to you, thank them and don’t argue!).
Gather more data: If you’re unsure how to proceed in your relationship, you may simply not have enough information to make an informed decision. Consider what data you’re missing and devise ways to gather the needed information. Think of yourself as a scientist running relational experiments. For example, let’s assume you doubt whether you and your partner would be good co-parents, yet you know you want kids. To test your hypothesis and determine long-term compatibility, you might ask your partner to babysit your nephew with you, then notice whether your concerns grow or lessen.
Get professional support: Did you know that indecisiveness is a symptom of anxiety? In addition, early attachment traumas correlate with higher levels of distress in relationships in adulthood. In other words, deciding whether to break up or stay may feel nearly impossible if you’ve experienced painful relationships, especially in childhood. You don’t need to make this decision alone – work with a trauma-informed, attachment-oriented therapist to heal the past so you can feel clear in the present.
TLDR;
If you’re uncertain whether it’s time to break up with your partner:
Assess your relationship’s health, including the quality of your conflicts.
Signs of a healthy relationship: comfortable pace, trust, honesty, independence, respect, equality, kindness, taking responsibility, healthy conflict, and fun.
Signs of an unhealthy relationship: intensity, sabotage, betrayal, isolation, manipulation, guilting, belittling, deflecting responsibility, volatility, and possessiveness.
Look for signs of normal vs. excessive or detrimental conflict.
Consider your personal relationship patterns and attachment styles.
Identify your relationship patterns, especially regarding conflict resolution and breakups, and correct for unhealthy tendencies.
Effectively communicate concerns with your partner
Share concerns and needs with your partner: make specific requests, use objective descriptions and emotions, use fair fighting rules, and avoid unnecessary threats to the relationship.
Still stuck? Try these strategies:
Give yourself time
Set a deadline
Don’t wait for absolute certainty
Seek feedback from trusted others.
Gathering additional data by running experiments
Consult with a skilled relationship therapist.