It’s been a while since you first felt “jerk shock”: the realization that the person you’re with has feet of clay. But instead of giving up, you tried everything you could think of to improve the relationship: honesty and romantic vacations and how-to-have-a-great-relationship books and maybe even therapy. You’ve tried overlooking all the things that hurt or annoy you, and you’ve tried dealing with them. You’ve tried to make the other person happy, and you’ve tried to get the other to make you happy. You’ve tried ... it’s probably hard to remember all the things you’ve tried.

After working on the front lines as a therapist for more than twenty years, I’ve learned that almost no one gets to this point without having worked hard to make the relationship better. We take love too seriously to give up on it without a fight. At the same time, on almost the very first day that love isn’t enough, we also feel hurt, and we withdraw and stand back, waiting and hoping for the other person to make things better.

But thinking about leaving hasn’t helped either. It’s not that you don’t know how to go about it, at least in general. It’s just that you aren’t sure you’ll be better off leaving. Even when you’re fed up with the person you’re with, it’s still not clear that leaving will be better than your entire current life with that person.

Every time you start trying to focus on leaving, thoughts creep in about how you’ll find a place to live, and how you’ll be able to afford it, and whether you’ll find love again, and how expensive childcare or child support will be, and endless other details about how you’ll live. Worries like these just make it harder to leave, and the more of these worries there are, the more you’re willing to put up with a relationship that would otherwise be too bad to stay in.