What kind of love do you dream about at night? What are you willing to forego in service to a love like that?
Life isn’t infinite.
Sooner or later, we all die.
Annie Dillard once said, “How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
Frequently, I see women posting in my Facebook community asking for support, saying that they’ve been in an ongoing, not-quite-here not-quite-there “situationship” for several years, and they don’t know how to get out.
Every time this topic comes up in the group, I'm struck by the number of women who comment that they’ve felt trapped in a situationship for a number of years — sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes five, twelve, even eighteen . . .
Each time, I give the same advice. That advice holds a LOTTTT of tough love — but I know it’s what they need to hear.
I’m going to share that advice with you here, in the hope that it will support you if it’s what you need to hear, too.
My advice is:
How willing are you for this situationship to be your life in five years from now? In ten years from now? In twenty years from now?
What goals do you have for your life?
Do they involve a solid, reliable partnership? Do they involve reciprocal love? Do they involve a partner you can count on? What about having a family?
What are you willing to forego in service to a love like that?
We each hold the opportunity to make choices.
We can choose to stay, or we can choose to go.
If we choose to stay, we also choose to forego the partnership, the reciprocality, and the safety, and the family.
If we choose to go, we also choose to forego the passion, the mystery, and the hope we have for this situation to “all work out” one day.
Which do you choose?
Either choice will be "hard." Which "hard" do you choose?
And does your desire for your dream (the partnership, the consistency, the reciprocality) outweigh your desire to avoid the "hard" of letting go of this partnership now?
Or does your situationship matter enough to you that it’s worth sacrificing your dreams of reciprocal love for?
Only you know what matters so much to you that you’re willing to forego all else in service to it.
What kind of love do you dream about at night?
What are you willing to forego in service to a love like that?