If you’re caught in the stay-or-go question, Joe points out, you’re living in the future — and the future is always either idealized or demonized. You leave the present in order to fantasize about a perfect state where you’ll finally feel what you want, while the actual solution only exists in the present.
“If you’re in the question, you’re in the future. You’re trying to figure out the future. Because the solution only [exists] in the present.”
This cuts both ways. You can idealize the partner or job and merge into it, then feel lost. Or you can idealize the freedom of leaving — “if I leave this, then I can be who I want to be” — projecting onto a future state the openness that’s available right now. And idealizing the leave is dangerous because, without inner work, you simply repeat the pattern with a new partner who turns out just as controlling as the last.
“Maybe I should leave this relationship so I can go find another relationship that’s just like this relationship and be in this exact same pattern again in 2 months or 2 years or 2 decades.”
The question worth asking is: how would the decision change if you let yourself be free, or open-hearted, right now — without doing the one thing you think you need to do first?
Related Concepts
- Making happiness conditional on the future destroys present connection
- Showing up as yourself answers the stay-or-leave question
- Grieve the relationship to avoid repeating it
- Mourning a relationship prevents repeating it
- Stay-or-leave is really the question ‘can I stay with myself?’
- Nothing is unlovable in the present moment
- Real commitment is to stay in connection, not to stay together
- Purpose is lived in the present moment