Release Date: Friday, August 3, 2007

Stay — or leave — in love

From a reader:

I was sorting through some old files today and came across a column you wrote (How hard should you try to make a marriage work?) that was published in 2002.

I had highlighted two sentences that helped me resolve, in my own mind, what I needed to do about my own troubled marriage. Those sentences were as follows:

"It takes more courage to give up and try again than it takes to give up and hang around. It takes more fortitude and faith to make another relationship work than it does to become indifferent."

At the time I read your article, I had become so indifferent about everything in my life that I had seriously considered suicide to end the life I was only partially living. When my life was in such turmoil, I never took the time to say "thanks" for your insightful article, so I hope you will accept them now.

I finally left my psychologically abusive marriage of 24 years. I literally walked out one day with nothing but a roll of quarters, which I used to catch a bus out of town, after seeking shelter from the local police department until my husband left the area as he was trying to run over me with his car.

Even though I had nothing to my name, I felt like an enormous burden had been lifted from my shoulders. To leave behind all of the material things we had accumulated during our long marriage was, to me, a bargain, because not only did I give him no reason to keep chasing me, but I was able to get a fresh start without constant reminders of the life I left behind.

Although things were rough for a while, at this stage of my life, things couldn't be better. I've met someone who treats me with respect, and I finally know what "LOVE" is all about. I thought I was in love before, but I didn't have a clue.

Thank you, Jan, from the bottom of my heart.

If you wrestle with the decision to break away, perhaps the words that followed the ones highlighted by the reader five years ago will help:

How do you know when to give up on a relationship that's not working? How do you know if you can fix it, heal it and make it work again?

I think you find love, or unconditional acceptance.

It may mean digging through your ego, throwing out the notion that your partner is supposed to change, dismissing what the neighbors think and re-establishing misplaced priorities.

You might struggle to find it, but love is always there. And when you find it, you find the answer, the answer you already had at a core level.

You can't really make a bad choice when you make it in love. And you can't really make a good choice when you don't make it in love.

Sometimes we confuse love with our emotions. But, most of us have figured out that our emotions can waver — dramatically — sometimes from one minute to the next. And, our emotions have a way of bringing different thoughts into focus, making it easy for us to rationalize the wild shifts in our feelings and our behavior.

Love is the one thing that doesn't change. It's the one thing that we can count on. It's always there, burned in our hearts.

And love has a way of making everybody a winner. Nobody has to lose. Nobody has to be wrong. When we act in love, both sides win. We feel joy without feeling guilty. We know peace without waging war.

So, how hard do you try? You try just as hard as you must to know the joy and the peace that only come from love, that only come from both sides winning. And maybe it's when you know you're both losing that you walk away.