When to step back from a difficult relationship – National Public Radio (NPR)
Life Kit, Tools To Help You Get It Together
How to decide whether to step back from a difficult relationship — or stick it out
October 28, 20254:01 PM ET, By Marielle Segarra, Clare Marie Schneider, and Malaka Gharib
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You have a strained relationship with your father, but he recently developed health issues and needs someone to care for him. You don’t feel emotionally fulfilled in your marriage, but you’ve been with your partner for 10 years. You’ve made a new friend who’s nice most of the time, but is mean when she’s angry.
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Should you step back from these relationships or stick them out?
These are the kinds of dilemmas that therapist KC Davis tackles in her book published earlier this year, Who Deserves Your Love: How to Create Boundaries to Start, Strengthen or End Any Relationship. It offers practical advice on how to move forward when relationships with family members, romantic partners or friends become difficult.
The book features a flowchart that Davis calls “The Relationship Decision Tree.” It consists of questions that Davis asks clients when their loved ones are behaving in a way that bothers them. It helps them “make decisions about whether to lean into this relationship or disengage,” she says.
Davis, author of the best-selling book How to Keep House While Drowning, talks through a few questions adapted from her framework.
KC Davis is a therapist and the author of
Who Deserves Your Love: How to Create Boundaries to Start, Strengthen, or End Any Relationship. Left: Julia Soefer/Right: S&S / Simon Element
Why is this behavior objectionable to you?
This question can help you pinpoint exactly what’s “bothering you about a person you love,” Davis says, because often there are many reasons. Parsing through the “why” can help you decide how to proceed.
Let’s say your roommate isn’t doing their chores. Ask yourself what annoys you specifically about that behavior, Davis says. Is it just something you don’t like, or is it actually hurtful or harmful?
Are they willing to change?
Once you start digging deeper, you might find that those dirty dishes in the sink “actually directly impacts me negatively,” Davis says. Maybe they’re starting to attract bugs.
Your next move is to have a conversation with your roommate. Are they willing to change their behavior? They may not do things exactly your way, so work on a solution together. Maybe you strike a deal where they cook and you clean, or they commit to doing the dishes before the end of the night.
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Does staying in this relationship violate my values?
Your most important values are your physical safety, your psychological safety and the physical and psychological safety of minor children, Davis says. “If I cannot meet those responsibilities, then it’s against my values to continue in this relationship.”
You may have other core values as well, like the safety of a dependent parent or sibling, or the keeping of your sobriety.
Would leaving this relationship violate my values?
What happens if staying in the relationship doesn’t violate your values, but you still don’t want to maintain the relationship?
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
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