Why You Stayed

My buddy put this up on Facebook which I found funny, since he's never had a relationship last longer than a Superbowl party before.

Reasons People Stay In Relationships When They're Unhappy

Nevertheless, it made me think back to one relationship I was in briefly where I stayed because he had bought me a really nice necklace and I felt like I owed him enough sex to pay back the cost of the jewelry. Perhaps not the best reason to stick it out.

Focus: Bad relationships that you've stayed in, for any period of time. Why did you stay? And what was the straw that made you leave?

 

What's a relationship?

No but seriously. I was with Xfinity for far too long.

 

I took a semester off from college between my first and second years and had been dating a girl that summer. We were about an hour apart and would only see each other once, maybe twice a week, which was fine. The sex was great, but the relationship wasn't anything to get excited about after that. I had started to have a hunch that maybe I wasn't the only guy involved with her, but, again, good sex and limited concern for the welfare of the relationship.

I had plans to go see her one Friday and I got to her apartment and she wasn't there. I figured she was still at work and it had been a long day and I feel asleep on the couch and woke up about 10:00 and no sign of her. I grabbed my toothbrush and left. We talked the next day and I think she said she forgot. I don't really recall exactly. I found out from a friend that she moved in with a guy about three weeks later, so that pretty much confirmed my cheating theory.

In short, good sex. Which is what 90% of these answers are going to be.

 

To broaden the topic a bit, lest (as Noland speculates) all the answers be "the banging was good", let's also expand it to toxic friendships or familial relationships.

Although, given that some of you all live in the South, I suppose it's possible that your reason for staying in a rough family relationship might also be "the banging was good"...

 

I am curious what "enough" was and what the conversion rate is. A nice pair of gold earrings = one good missionary lay; 1/4 carat diamond pendant = two blowjobs; and so on . . .

Focus: Bad relationships that you've stayed in, for any period of time. Why did you stay? And what was the straw that made you leave?

I dated a girl in college for over 18 months. The first 2-3 months were great - we had lots of fun together and laughed a lot. I thought for sure I was going to marry her. I met her family, she met mine, her mother adored me. Some fairly significant differences in values and philosophies began to show after 6-8 months. The last 3-4 months, all we did was fight. I stuck it out, because I thought that's what you do. I also thought, well gee, the first few months were so fun, there has to be something there, right? Wrong. The last straw was I had started developing serious feelings for another girl that was "just a friend." I did not pursue, because I was "supposed to stay" with the girlfriend. Girlfriend gave me an ultimatum, to either be all in with her, and take the next step (proposing) or to cut it off. She said it was up to me, and I should think about it over Spring break - we were not going to be together. I came back from Spring break and said, "yeah, I thought about it. Bye." (I ended up in a great relationship with the other girl, which sadly, just wasn't mean to be simply due to timing and circumstance. We parted on good terms and we are still friends today.)

 

I hate you people sometimes.

 

Why did I stay? Because I loved them.

My ex wife and I had an 8 year age gap, and we were at different places in our lives. She wanted to be a monogamous grown up - I wanted to be a man child and whore. I stayed because I loved her. Almost a decade of friendship and love and 5 years or whatever it was of cohabitation isn't something you let go of easily. Especially not when all the things I loved about her were still true and she was still an amazing person. It's just we weren't right as a couple.

The boy I loved is still the only real long term relationship with a guy. I still love him, but he was at a point in his life where self destruction and being stoned was more important than anything else. I stayed for a while because I love his stupid ass. But I was years past the urge to burn myself up in drugs and find a new truth in the ashes. Eventually I couldn't deal with him being a fucking flake - even though I completely understood why.

Walking away from something or someone you love is hard. It takes time to figure out that it has to happen.

 

To toss in the famous line "I think I've posted about this before..."

I dated this girl about 3 years ago. We actually went to H.S. together were friendly, but never fully engaged in any friendship. Jump 7+ years, bumped into her in the large corporate building that housed my job at the time. Found out she lived close and started hanging out.

She was crazy, I didn't know it at the time. Just thought she had a mild case of daddy issues. She started off saying we'd be friends but always found a way for me to pay for things and hinted at us dating in some nebulous future. Got mad as hell when I talked to other girls, then tried to start eating up all my free time. All of it.

What kept me around was I have this god complex/amateur psychologist mind when it comes to people problems and solving them. I give a ton of advice to all my friends, help them diagnose random situations. Most of the time, I'm right. So I thought "I need to practice what I preach." And stayed around thinking "I can fix her, and I can fix this." I also had not been in a long term relationship at that age. Some of the fights would her basically telling me I'm a bad boyfriend and staying with her would help me be better. Clear logic. Now I didn't have low self-esteem about it, just thought "Maybe she's right." So she'd start a fight over one thing and I'd resolve that, and I'd think "Boom, I got it." Then another thing would come. It became an endless game of whack-a-mole. I realized it wasn't me.

Now of course she had a ridiculous body, could deep throat, was a squirter and the sex was mindblowing. But I got out of it two ways. First of all, she tried to use sex as a thing, and would on purpose stop having sex with me to punish me for whatever she thought. Second I had a wake-up call come from a random hook-up who reminded me she wasn't my only source to get laid. Combined with all the above, I got the fuck out. Now when I broke up with her, I made sure I had all my stuff already, and did it in public. Didn't stop her from punching me in the face. It was kinda hot though.

 

Cheaper to keep her.

 

I think the other side of this coin is that just because a relationship broke up doesn't mean that you've failed. Dr. Rob wrote about this a little bit, but fundamentally, not every relationship is meant to stay together, and the fact that it doesn't last forever isn't necessarily a sign of a character flaw or your inability to work things out. Going to therapy, taking a vacation together, whatever? Yeah, those might be able to help resolve issues, but sometimes it's going to help you identify issues that are intractable.

A misplaced sense of guilt/obligation. I guess I didn't want to stir the pot or have other family members ask awkward questions or somehow embarrass the family, or maybe I really just did need one big kick out the door after spending my teenage years fantasizing about the day I wouldn't ever have to see my father again. Now I just don't talk to my dad any more, and only respond to my mom's e-mails when I feel like it, which isn't very often. I can't say I really miss them. I never wanted to see them much anyways and only came around for holidays for larger family gatherings. And I'm sure it's just causing a massive scandal with either side of the family, but I can't say I miss them all that much, either. Sometimes I wonder about it. Fundamentally, my absence is the only weapon I have in my defense, the only way of saying "I won't put up with you anymore" that achieves any results.

 

My mom is, for lack of a better word, utterly batshit insane. She's been more a detriment than an asset, and once I was out of diapers, I think had no fucking clue what to do with kids. I can count the amount of times she picked me up from school as a kid on one hand. She was also a petulant, whiny, narcissistic and self-destructive person. Having to hear about her god-awful childhood in Bumfuck, Montana was bad, were apparently her neighbor raped her when she was young, yet was also having sex with her mom and hence it was kept a secret. Her father buried himself in work, silent rage and alcoholism to wile away his time on Earth, also under the knowledge that his wife, my maternal grandmother who is now dead and makes me so enraged I sometimes want to just resurrect her somehow just to set her on fire, cheated on him constantly and he had to live with the knowledge that some of his myriad kids weren't of his genes, which was exacerbated by the fact that thanks to some sort of infection his right testicle was removed when he was a kid.

So, all of this lead into my mom growing up into a person who is basically stuck at a fourteen-year old's level of maturity, and because she also has her own mom's arrogance and narcissism, it led into some serious shit. My dad has had to cover for her, put her through nursing school, bribe us into writing her term papers for her continued nursing education (She's a nurse practitioner now) and basically coddled her throughout her life out of what Nett described; "Never quit." And this winter was a turn-around of magnetic proportions; my mom basically went so nuts on my father while I was at their house I had to call 911 (She bit his forehead and neck really bad and began threatening him with a steak knife) and when I finally got through after she nearly got me with the knife three times and kept interrupting the phone calls, I had to bar the door to my youngest brother's room from her getting in. Finally, the cops arrived, argued her out of her room, while she histrionically shrieked and then fawned, and was told to dress, (She was in a bathrobe and nightgown throughout this ordeal) while my father, with blood dripping down his forehead and my brothers had to explain what the fuck happened.

They take my mom down to jail, release her after a nurse friend of hers, who didn't know her TOO well, posted bail. Then invited her into her house. My mom quickly wore her welcome out mumbling crazy little chants to herself and making cookies at 3 AM in the morning. Then one night, after that, my mom decides during a cold winter storm to walk around mutely in the middle of the night on my brother's high school track field. She's found later by the local police, mumbling to herself and hypothermic. They take her to hospital and decide to put her in behavioral health. Therein, they find out she's Bipolar Disorder and begin dosing her for it. Finally, she's arraigned and back home and on pills, and my father still rumbles about how shitty she is all the time. I just have learned to understand my mom was never going to be like other kid's moms when I was young, and that while I'll be cordial with her as an adult, I really don't care for her. She's a damaged person, but she took the path of damaging others and I am convinced that even if she wasn't Bipolar, she'd still be lazy, self-obsessed and argumentative with everyone, so I just learned to accept the shit.

 

I stayed because she was a genuinely awesome person, who was supportive, helpful, fun and could help balance out my emotional and psychological roller coaster. With her, I was a much better person. We had a profound, deep connection from a ton of shared time and experiences together. 10/10 would marry.

I left, because four years of long distance is too much to ask for people who aren't in the military or in jail. To have such deep feelings for someone and compound them with an intense loneliness felt like mourning. I went from seeing her every day, to only on weekends, to on sporadically timed visits inevitably marred by work/school intrusions. She started to feel like an obligation-my nightly call, and when we were too busy, a ghost.

 

I stayed in a relationship and then a friendship for years because he was a manipulative, abusive asshole who would pull me back in right when he could sense I'd had enough and was about to leave or when he needed support he couldn't find elsewhere. Then when he did turn the charm back on things were really good. When we broke up he had recognized and apologized for everything so I thought things would change when we were friends and that he wouldn't be able to hurt me in the same ways, but he did. I was going through a lot of shit during the last few years we were in contact and he was simultaneously a large part of what was happening and pretty much the only one helping me through it. So I got stuck in this weird place of putting up with his shit in fear of losing my support system. And the couple of times I did snap and told him to make up his mind about whether or not he gave a shit about me and, if he decided he did, to start acting like it, the cycle would start all over again.

The last straw was thanks to one of those glitch-y Facebook things where I saw a post of his on someone else's page that I shouldn't have been able to see, and found out he had joined the army and would be leaving for training in a month. I hadn't even known he'd even begun the process of enlisting, let alone had actually joined or would be leaving so soon. I decided not to say anything and to wait to see if he would tell me, and the day came and went and I never heard a word despite still talking several times a week. So if I hadn't seen the post it would've been like he had completely dropped off the face of the earth and I would've probably thought he had died or something. I have A Thing about people just completely disappearing from my life so it hit really hard. I had no idea whether it was a conscious, deliberate choice not to tell me, or if I was so far off his radar of giving a shit that he didn't think he needed to tell me or never realized he hadn't told me, and I didn't know which one was worse. So I deleted him off of everything so I wouldn't be tempted to contact him and he'd get the hint once he got access to his phone or the internet again, and we haven't spoken since.

 

I've stayed once, despite the cheating and glaring signs it should end, for very simple reasons - because I loved her, and she was everything to me.

Since then, I pride myself on knowing when things aren't working in a romantic relationship/friendship/job. Having had a series of healthy relationships since has reinforced my conviction to leave at the appropriate time.

 

I was raised with that whole "Marriage is forever" thing, along with a healthy dose of "You stick it out no matter what because that's what you're supposed to do..."
Small towns do that. You get married young and you stick it out because divorce isn't considered. Children out of wedlock? A-okay. Divorce? You're flirting with sin now, bro.

Anyhow.
I stayed because I didn't know how to leave. I didn't know how to make that happen for myself.
Then, when he went someone on training, it was so much better. I could breath. I could move. I wasn't hiding in the background.

The second time, I stayed...but once he said he wasn't in it anymore, my goal was to end it. I'd given up so much of myself by being stay at home mom, I had to start over career wise. I 'stayed' because we agreed that I could remain in the house until a certain point and then I'd move on. His mental health issues definitely precluded that.

I'll never stay out of obligation again. Once I realize that I don't WANT to be where I'm at? Gone.

 

Don't Fuck With Mr. Zero

The obligation of the institution. But, when did you call the movers?

 

Re: Don't Fuck With Mr. Zero

I didn't take anything with me but my kids and my car.

The things...eh. Fuck it. I'll buy more.