Why Do We Choose to Stay with Someone?

01/11/07

I have not seen this friend of mine for a while. We connected last week when she found out from another friend that I am back in Bangkok. While our lovely conversation is going on, she tells me about the story of her last relationship. The relationship that was full of lies, abusiveness and disrespect. I ask her why she choose to stay in that relationship when she was so unhappy. She says she loves him wholeheartedly and she thinks that her ex-boyfriend felt the same. But finally when the reality hit hard and she realized that what she thought was a total fantasy, she decided to walk away. We have a very intense but constructive conversation about the reason why we choose to stay with someone even though we know all so well that the relationship is built on lies, abusiveness and heartbreak. I also have some good friends in New York who still stay in this kind of relationship even though they are not very happy about it. As our conversation goes on, I have come up with 4 reasons why some people choose stay in the relationship that they know it is not working.

1. You complete me.

I still remember I was crying when Jerry McGuire says “You complete me” to his girlfriend. That was still one of my most romantic scenes from the movie. Psychologically, we tend to look for something that we think we miss from someone we love either personality, fantasy or love. I believe someone can temporarily fill something we are yearning for but the most important thing is we need to fill a hole or a void in our life before someone can complete us. In other words, we need to love and to value ourselves before someone does. We need to be happy for who we are and be independent before we enter the relationship. To find someone to fulfill our happiness is like chasing our own shadow, we will never catch it. Once we love ourselves, we will realize that we do not have to stay in this abusive relationship because we know that we can be happy with or without him/her.

2. Wishful Thinking

My friend tells me the reason she stayed in the relationship for three years even though her ex-boyfriend always lied and cheated on her because she believed that one day he would change. People always have a wishful thinking that someone we love will eventually love us enough to change for us. The fact is that if he/she could not change then, why in the world he/she can change now or will in the future? I am not saying that people cannot change. I do believe people can change but when? If the same problems happen again and again and every time we have to repeat ourselves in dealing with the same issues, why in the world we want to bear those so many heartaches and to try to solve the never ending problems? Shouldn’t we be happy in the relationship?

3. Stuck in the name of love

We cannot choose who we fall in love with but we can choose when to walk away when enough is really enough. Love is always an excuse for the people who choose to stay in the abusive relationship. In my friend’s case, if her ex-boyfriend really loved her, he would not even think of having affairs with other women. He kept saying how much he loved my friend but action always speak louder than words. He blew her off so many times just to find out after that he was with other women. Her reactions? She cried and always forgave him at the end. What kind of love when he was cheating on her with other girls? What kind of love when he lied about everything? When you truly love someone, your mind should only concentrate on him/her not someone else. Remember, someone who loves you will never make you cry, someone who make you cry is not worth your tears!

4. I will never find someone else

This is a normal mentality of a lot of women, particularly Thai women who have reached thier 30s. They choose to stay in a bad relationship because they are afraid of not be able to find someone else. They would rather stay in this abusive relationship than put themselves in the market again. The fact is that to stay in this no future relationship, they are missing the opportunities to meet new people. I believe there are a lot of people out there who deserve us. When someone does not appreciate our contribution in the relationship, it's time to walk away and take a risk with new people. Why do we want to keep invest in this losing portfolio? Also in this kind of situation, sooner or later, he would dump my friend anyway when he finally found someone else. So before he does it, we have to be the one who dump him and be called a “Dumper!" not a "Loser!"

She says in retrospect she is glad that she finally walked away. It was heartbroken at first but it was the right thing to do in the long run. What she is sad is just the pictures from the past and all the fantasy that she created with her ex-boyfriend but at least she does not have to be miserable the rest of her life.

I tell her if it were me, I would rather swallow my own blood and tears than beg someone to stay with me no matter how much I love them.

My friend is a beautiful person with all great qualities I admire. So at the end I tell her I am glad too that she finally walked away from that situation. There are tons of people out there who will value for who she is and what she is capable of contributing in his life.

And when the time comes, her ex-boyfriend will realize that it’s his loss not hers.

Tae Athikomvittaya