"Episode 3: Comfortable Cage: 3 Reasons We Stay In Dead-End Relationships"

And trust me when I say I know what it's like to make your own life difficult. Does your life feel like Groundhog Day on repeat? Welcome to the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast. I was married 18 years, and it was 18 years of the holidays, the vacations, relocations, raising kids, all the things that come with marriage, all the standard ups and downs. And from the outside, it all looked great. But somewhere in there, and I couldn't tell you the exact day or why, I just knew. I knew we weren't right for each other. And it wasn't a not having a rough patch not right or not we'll figure it out not right. It was kind of this quiet, settled kind of knowing that I carried around for longer than I really like to admit. Because knowing something and acting on it are two completely different things. And that's really what this episode is about. You know, my marriage ended up ending. And it was not the graceful mutual respect we just grew apart split. I had pictured in my head before it happened. It was hard and it was messy in ways I didn't expect. And on the other side of it, I found someone who's genuinely an amazing fit for my life. But I want to be really clear about something before I go further, and it's because it matters. And this isn't about who was right. I'm sure just as much as she wasn't the right fit for me for the remainder of my life, I wasn't the right fit for her either. So that's not an insult to either of us. It's just true. Two people can be good people, you know, everyone could be trying, and they still can be wrong for one another. So this episode isn't about keeping score on an old relationship or marriage. It's about something far bigger than my marriage. It's about the cage I feel like a lot of us build for ourselves. And then we kind of decorate it, and then we convince ourselves that it's actually a home. And I almost would call it a comfortable cage. And it's comfortable because it's familiar. You know, it's a cage because it keeps something in and it also keeps something out. So, you know, there's a multitude of reasons we stay locked in a relationship long after we know it isn't serving either person. Uh, but today I want to walk through three of the reasons that you might relate to if you're questioning your own situation. So the first reason is the idea that time invested or um having children somehow means that we're obligated to stay uh the course in a relationship that really doesn't serve anyone anymore. And deep down, we know that it doesn't matter what we do because it never will. And here's kind of how that thinking goes. We've been together for five years, 10 years, 20 years. We have kids together, uh house together, our entire lives are intertwined. And in our reasoning, um that history stops us from really focusing on something that we built. And it starts being about feeling like it's something that we owe. So we start to believe that the years themselves somehow correlate to us being committed to settling. So, but time invested in the wrong thing doesn't make it the right thing. It just makes the the wrong thing last longer, if you will. And here's the part that took me the longest to understand, especially around kids. We tell ourselves staying for the children, that somehow staying together, uh even in something that may not be serving us, uh it really ends up in a position where people become quietly resentful. But we say it's a responsible thing to do, it's the unselfish thing to do, it's the good parent thing. But, and you may differ in opinions, but I believe kids don't need two parents pretending. They need to see what the whole honest life looks like. And a lot of the time, what they're actually growing up watching, it's not a stable home, even if we pretend that's what it is. It's just a demonstration. It's a demonstration of what it looks like to stay somewhere out of obligation instead of out of choice. And that's the model that our children will carry into their own relationships someday, whether we mean for them to or not. So time and children are real. That's a huge deal, right? There's there's many of us that would put our children far ahead of ourselves. And they matter and they make the decision far heavier. Uh, it makes it more complicated, it makes it more painful to sit with. But they're they're not the proof that you're somehow locked in. They're just the proof that if if you look at the overall stakes for the game, the stakes are higher than what they used to be than if you were both single individuals with no children. So the the second reason um is really bigger than the relationship itself. And it's the fear of blowing up the life that we know versus the fear of living the wrong one. And I think for most of us in this situation, if we're being totally honest, we are far more afraid of the first one than we are the second one. We don't changing our current environment, what we're what we've always done versus feeling like you're living a lie, the first one is far more of a concern. Because the wrong life's familiar, you know, it has a rhythm to it. Even if it's not as happy as it should be, it's predictable. You know what tomorrow looks like, even if you don't love it. But blowing the whole thing up, I mean, that's that's an unknown. And a lot of the times you know there's gonna be chaos that lies ahead. And most of us navigate away from pain and stress and chaos. And sometimes that decision you know is gonna put you right in the middle of it. The other thing is for a lot of people, it's the family finding out, it's the friends finding out, it's the social media crowd where your where your social media posts that you made about your your endless happiness are are suddenly bullshit, right? If just being honest, that's the version of you that everyone thought that had everything figured out, and suddenly um you don't have anything figured out at all, which there's no shame in. But internally, there's shame that we carry, and there's guilt and there is embarrassment. And sometimes that will keep us locked in. So the fear shows up in a few different places. You know, sometimes it's the family, uh, sometimes it's the idea of sitting across the table from them at a holiday or explaining what happened. You end up, you know, watching people that you love and friends that you had in common that will take sides. You're worrying that you're disappointing people that have always been proud of you and thought you had it all together. Sometimes, like I said, it's the public perception, the story you've told the world about your life and what it means to suddenly have to rewrite it. You know, nobody really wants to be that headline and nobody wants their name attached to um it didn't work out. It feels like your whole identity really has been put at risk and compromised. And that's a lot. That's that's heavy lifting. So sometimes it it's the money. You know, I'm not gonna pretend that's a small thing because it isn't. You know, leaving means a lot of the times that you're splitting assets, you're starting over financially, there's real fear about stability for you and anyone that's depending on you. That fear is legitimate. And I'm not telling you to ignore it because um in my divorce, the financial consequences were borderline devastating, but it simply is what it is. That's how things work. But here's what I ask you to sit with. None of those fears, family, image, money, are actually whether or not your relationship is the right one. You know, those things are about the hurdles that would lie ahead if you decide to leave the wrong relationship. And those two things are very different questions. You know, one is, is this working? The other is, what will people think and what will it cost me? So we let the second question answer the first one a lot of the times, which there's no shame in. That's that's how we're wired. Um, but that's how we end up staying in something that we already know in our heart of hearts isn't right. The last and third reason I want to touch on uh is one of the quietest, and I think it's one of the most common. And we think deep down that we can change people. Or we think that eventually they're just gonna show up in a way that we need them to. You know, as partners, I think we could agree we've all failed to show up for our significant other at one time or another. In a healthy relationship, you should be able to communicate when your partner isn't showing up the way that you need them. Uh, if you can't express that without receiving some form of gaslighting or defensiveness, then in my opinion, that relationship is doomed already. If you can speak your mind, though, but there's no effort made by the individual, um, you're eventually going to come to a decision point. And it's not, it's not really about our partners meeting all of our expectations because people should be allowed to be themselves. Um, we we shouldn't try to change who people are, but we would hope that our partners love us enough to tune in and try to meet us halfway if there's an area where they're deficient. So, you know, I think the big thing is we know people can grow, people can change, and I'm not saying nobody ever does, but there is a big difference between someone changing because they want to on their own timeline and for their own reasons, and someone changing because we've been quietly waiting or hoping or managing and guilting and hinting for years, expecting really a different version of that person to eventually show up. You know, that's that's not a partner. It's um it's more like a project, right? And when you're in a relationship with a project instead of a person, you're not actually loving who's in front of you. You're loving who you're hoping that someday they're gonna become. And that hope, that hope can keep you tethered to something that was never ever going to arrive. And again, a lot of the times we can feel that right here. So the hardest part of this one is that it can look like optimism. It can look like commitment, like faith in the other person, like refusing to give up, right? It sounds, it sounds regal and wonderful, but sometimes waiting for someone to become who you need, it isn't hope. It's really just donating more of your good years to a situation that will never give you what you deserve. So time invested in kids making us feel locked in, the fear of blowing up the life we know being louder than the fear living the wrong, you know, life with the wrong person, and believing someone will eventually change into what we need them to be. These three reasons, they're all three cages. All of them are comfortable in their own way, because you know, comfortable in this case doesn't mean good. It just means familiar. You're used to it. And please know I'm not telling you in at all what to do with your relationship. And I'm also not advocating to not giving 110% or simply pulling the plug when things get hard. Not at all what I'm saying. I don't know your situation. Um, I'm not going to pretend that my personal situation of 18 years of marriage and a divorce, um, you know, somehow makes me an authority on your situation. But what I do know is none of these reasons, not time, not fear, not hope, um that somebody will eventually change, are actually good enough reasons to stay somewhere that indeed in really in the deepest parts of your being knows this is not my person. You know, time's valuable. Being appreciated is valuable. And burying our head in the sand rarely leads to being fulfilled or happiness. So just things to consider. Uh, and as always, I'm wishing you all the best. Thanks for tuning in. If you have any comments, um, please let me know and uh appreciate all the support. Thanks.