I won’t lie, I’m not usually the first to admit I’ve got a bad habit. It’s embarrassing to acknowledge my addiction to sugar or my annoying ability to somehow always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But sometimes (okay, all the time for me), bad habits are addicting and hard to shake.
Relationships, especially, can be hard to get out of when you’ve been in it for so long–or even if you haven’t. A lot of times it can be so clear to our friends and family that we need to break the f*ck up with a person, but we’re blind to the flaws of the relationship. There are, however, a few ways to know when to get the hell out, so I asked my fellow ladies about warning signs to watch out for.
Renae: I never confronted my ex about the problems I was having with him and our relationship. I was too concerned about hurting his feelings, so I just tried to bury my negative feelings. I think you know it’s time to break up when you can’t even confront the issues that could save the relationship. It’s not worth pretending like everything is okay when it isn’t. If you have given up inside and don’t want to put in the effort to fight for the relationship, you probably shouldn’t be in the relationship.
Korey: When I look back at past relationships, my biggest regret is usually not ending things sooner. I’m a pro at taking someone’s (many, many) flaws, and making them out to be cute, unique, and tolerable. Even when they’re technically deal-breakers, (looking at you, Trump-supporting meninist), I tend to soldier on, convinced I can either change them, or at least put up with their awfulness for long enough to be happy. But once I decided to be gutsy and pull the plug on a guy at the exact moment when I noticed I had more unhappy times with him than I did happy times.
It was scary, true, but I really think that made such a difference, and helped me get over him faster, as well as have less regrets.
Michelle O: For me, I usually grit my teeth and bear it thinking that things will get better, that is until I reach the point where I dread spending any time with them. Once I realize I’m frantically filling up my calendar in order to avoid a certain person… that’s when I know its time.
Ella: “Good luck finding someone who will ever love you like I do.”
He meant for that to be romantic, but those fighting words became the last of what was our relationship. I’m a hopeless romantic but I refuse to lose my independence in the making. And I believe you can have both, but that wasn’t the case in my last relationship. When it comes down to it, you know it’s time to call it quits when your relationship consumes you whole. When it becomes the thing that makes your world go round, not the thing that’s simply a part of your world. If nothing else, to believe no one could love me the way he believed he could… that was the biggest red flag of all. Because the only person who will always love me better than anyone else could is no one other than myself. After all, if I can’t love the relationship I have with myself, how could I possibly make a relationship work with anyone else?
