Stay or leave: moving past indecision

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace individual or couple support. If you are afraid of your partner, if there is violence, threats or control, the question is not first and foremost your happiness, but your safety: the time of separation can be a period of increased risk, and it needs to be prepared with help. Read section 5 and our programme Coercive control: recognising it and getting free, and contact a specialist helpline in your country or, in immediate danger, the emergency services. If you are thinking about dying or harming yourself, call your doctor the same day. Allow thirty-five minutes to read.

1. Before you begin

In the morning you are sure you have to leave. In the evening, a good moment together, a memory, the thought of the children or the flat, and you are no longer sure of anything. You have talked about it with your friends, who are tired of hearing it. You have made lists. You have waited for a sign. Nothing has settled it.

Or it is your partner who said "I don't know if I love you any more", "I don't know if I want to go on", and since then you have been living in suspense.

Three things, straight away.

Hesitating for a long time is not a sign of weakness. It is the expected reaction to a decision in which both options involve real losses. Almost everyone in this situation goes round in circles.

The aim is not to decide quickly, but to decide clearly. A decision taken to end the discomfort of hesitation, in one direction or the other, does not hold well.

Neither staying nor leaving is, in principle, the brave choice. Leaving can be an act of courage; so can staying and repairing. What matters is that the decision rests on what you really want, and not only on fear, guilt or pressure from others.

Who this guide is for

For you if you have been hesitating for months or years about leaving your partner.

For you if your partner is hesitating, and you want to understand what is happening and what you can do.

It applies whatever the sex and orientation of the partners, whether the couple is married or not, with or without children.

What this guide is not

It will not tell you whether to stay or leave. No one can know that for you, and be wary of those who are sure.

It does not replace help. It will help you choose it better.

How it is organised

Part I — Understanding (sections 2 to 5). Why people get stuck, what research says, what is not a relationship problem, and what is no longer indecision.

Part II — Taking stock (sections 6 to 8). The state of the relationship, what you want, and tools for getting out of rumination.

Part III — Deciding (sections 9 to 12). The three paths, when one wants to leave and the other to stay, the children, practical matters.

Part IV — After the decision (sections 13 to 15). Really staying, leaving well, and living with doubts.

Part V — Going further (sections 16 to 19). When to seek help, frequently asked questions, key points, sources.

2. Why people get stuck

Two losses, not a gain and a loss

Staying means giving up another possible life, perhaps a happiness imagined elsewhere. Leaving means losing a shared history, a daily life, often a family as it existed, sometimes a home, a standard of living, mutual friends. When both options have a cost, the mind moves from one to the other, each time seeing what it would lose.

Researchers call wanting and not wanting at the same time ambivalence. It is not a character flaw: it is the normal state of someone facing a major change. It is not resolved by forcing yourself, but by examining it.

What holds a couple together

The investment model, developed by Caryl Rusbult and confirmed by many studies, explains why people stay in a relationship. Commitment depends on three things:

• Satisfaction: what the relationship brings, compared with what you expect of it.
• Investments: everything you would lose by leaving — years spent, children, home, mutual friends, identity as a couple.
• Alternatives: what you imagine possible elsewhere — another relationship, life alone, your family.

This model sheds light on a reality often lived with shame: you can stay in an unsatisfying relationship because the investments are huge and the alternatives unclear. And you can leave a satisfying relationship if a very attractive alternative appears.

Two forms of commitment

Scott Stanley and Howard Markman distinguish dedication — wanting to build the future with the other person — from constraint commitment — what makes leaving costly: money, children, social pressure, fear. Many people who hesitate still have many constraints, and less and less dedication. Recognising this does not dictate the decision, but it clarifies what is holding you back.

Traps of the mind

Loss aversion. We feel a loss more strongly than a gain of the same size. What you would leave weighs more heavily than what you might find.

Status quo bias. When options are equal, we prefer what already exists. Not deciding often amounts, in practice, to staying.

Fear of regret. You imagine the regret of leaving, or of staying. Research on regret shows that in the short term people mainly regret what they did, but in the long term they regret more what they did not dare do. This does not say what to do; it invites you to examine both possible regrets.

Rumination. Turning the question over in your head for hours gives the impression of thinking. Research on rumination shows the opposite: it maintains low mood, makes problems seem more insoluble, and prevents action. It almost never produces new information.

The cost of prolonged hesitation

Hesitating for years has a price. You no longer invest in the relationship, since you are not sure you will stay; the relationship deteriorates, which strengthens the wish to leave; but you do not leave either. Both partners live in an exhausting in-between. Getting out of indecision, in one direction or the other, is often a relief in itself.

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