# Stay or Leave
Author:: Life of School The
## AI-Generated Summary
None
## Highlights
> It’s time to redefine a functioning adult. This isn’t someone who bristles at the idea of change, gently suggested; it’s someone who welcomes it as a path to redemption. The true adult knows they need to grow up. The truly healthy person knows they are ill (we all are). Conversely, the people who really need to change are those who think they don’t need to change at all, and who say it’s your problem when you float the idea. ([Location 93](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=93))
> A good enough relationship should give us the bravery to confront our flaws. ‘I want you to change’ is not a sign of cruelty; it’s proof that someone cares. The right person isn’t someone without issues; it’s someone who is committed to getting on top of them. Let’s go even further: the natural response to being with someone who resists change, and who sees our attempts to change them as an insult, might be to wonder if it is time to make a serious change to our lives. ([Location 108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=108))
> What ultimately counts for the success of love is not whether there are differences, but how differences are handled – whether with curiosity, a willingness to change, mutual forgiveness and modesty, or (in the doomed cases) with defensiveness, rigidity and entrenchment. ([Location 125](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=125))
> what gradually destroys love in the long term, even in the case of the most apparently well-matched couples, is an attitude of defensive pride, a shutting of the ears, a refusal to countenance that the partner may be trying to say something of desperate importance to them and has the right to be heard with a certain degree of good will and tolerance. In the end, defensiveness is the single greatest explanation for all divorces: the inability to listen with grace to what another person is saying without resorting to stubborn pride and denial. There are no problems so grave that they make it too hard to stay; there are no differences in social attitudes or interior design tastes so severe as to doom a love affair. There are only ever terrible ways for frustrations to be expressed and heard. The lover we desperately need is not the person who shares our every taste and interest; it is the kindly soul who has learnt to negotiate differences in taste with modesty and curiosity. ([Location 146](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=146))
> What really cannot be borne, and truly is the grounds for flight, is an absence of affection. The entire point of a relationship hangs on the feeling of being witnessed, understood, accepted, stimulated, listened to, bolstered and cherished by another person. Without this, we might as well be eating on our own for the long term. ([Location 208](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=208))
> We could almost forgo the acting out of many of our desires if we knew that a partner could understand why these mattered to us and could be tender with us around the house, even if (because of their own intimate history) their relationship to the erotic ran in a different direction. ([Location 222](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=222))
> What is fatal is not that our partner can’t enact our desires, but that they meet us with defensiveness, coldness, judgement or insult. ([Location 226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=226))
> Both staying and leaving could be made compatible with children’s concerns, because the emotional satisfaction of their parents is not the central issue for young people. The central issue is how much disruption there might be in their lives. ([Location 276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=276))
> We may reject healthier candidates not because we don’t, on paper, recognise their virtues, but because (as we can’t ever quite admit) we sense that they won’t make us suffer in the ways we have to suffer in order to feel that we are properly in love. ([Location 448](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=448))
> We stay not because we are still in love, but because we are terrified of laundry. ([Location 497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=497))
> we may find a partner who shuns some of the rawness and exposure demanded of emotional love in favour of immense devotion to practical tasks. Almost without being asked, they may start buying their partner all their clothes or taking on any job that comes up around the house; they may monopolise every aspect of the finances or take over the management of the kitchen. This absorption of the practical realm may also feel compelling to their partner, who, because of their own historic association between love and practical care, will gratefully acquiesce to ever more assistance, growing increasingly incompetent and dependent in the process, until they genuinely believe themselves unable to put on a wool wash or earn a payslip. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=512))
> In reality, it isn’t necessarily the one who leaves who is doing the rejecting, nor the one who ostensibly seeks to remain who is the one being rejected. Not everyone who leaves hates, and not everyone who stays loves. The person who really ‘leaves’ is the one who withdraws affection. And the one who really ‘remains’ is the one who believes in closeness with a partner, even if the frustration of this belief can end up causing this person to quit. ([Location 535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=535))
> To spare themselves the ravages of selfhatred, the departing lover should daily rehearse in their mind how they got to this place. As they head for the door, their truth is not ‘I am leaving you because I hate you’, but ‘I am leaving you because I love you so much and have tried so hard, too hard, to elicit a matching love that never felt available.’ ([Location 552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=552))
> Conquering the fear of being alone will be the ultimate guarantee of satisfying love henceforth. People who feel they have no choice make bad choices. ([Location 692](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=692))
> The relationship that is right for you isn’t the one without problems, where you won’t occasionally be desperate, lose your temper and behave atrociously. It’s one where you will never doubt whether you should really be there. You will be unhappy sometimes, but you’ll know in your marrow that you don’t secretly long to get out. Fortunately, you will never need to read a book like this again. ([Location 694](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=694))
> We can avoid feeling devastated by a break-up by knowing that there are many other ways in which we still need to develop. We may have learnt much, but we’re still far from complete. It’s just that the lessons we now have to take on board will come from someone else – or from the educative experience of being on our own for a while. ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=736))
> To stay with a person because we wish to avoid unpleasantness is no favour to them if we go on to be bitter, mean, snide, unfaithful and depressed around them for the next few decades. We’re not helping someone by sparing them a bad break-up scene if we then deliver a lifelong foot-dragging scene. ([Location 897](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=897))
> A surprising amount of the misery of the world comes from people being overly keen to appear kind, or rather being too cowardly to cause others short-term pain. The truly courageous way to leave is to allow ourselves to be hated for a while by someone who still loves us. We shouldn’t imagine that they will never find anyone else like us; they may believe it now and might even sweetly tell us so. But they won’t believe it when they finally understand who we are. Real kindness means getting out – even though the holiday has been booked, the apartment paid for and the wedding arranged. There’s nothing wrong with and nothing dangerous about deciding someone isn’t for us. There is something very wrong with ruining large chunks of someone else’s life while we squeamishly or fearfully hesitate to get out of the way. ([Location 899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=899))
> If we have decided to leave a partner but suddenly find we desire them once more in the last moments, we should beware of thinking ourselves back in love. We are merely enjoying an artificial rush for someone because we are, finally, on the outside looking in. This is a sign that we have, in a deep part of our souls, finally given up hope of ever trying to live with, or be happy alongside, them. ([Location 950](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHTPRH&location=950))