Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step by Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay in or Get Out of Your Relationship

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Kirshenbaum’s expertise allows her to pinpoint the pertinent questions…. And threaded through the book, which is written in a sympathetic, chatty, accessible style, are validating anecdotes that dramatize how other people have experienced and responded to the same problems the reader is going through.”— Publishers Weekly

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help

I wish someone had handed me this book 10years ago. If you are tired of the limbo life of “Should I stay or should I go?”, this book will give wings to whatever answer is already in your heart. Please do yourself a favor and buy it, even if you don’t read it now, you’ll have it when you need it. Diagnostic question #24. Does your partner do such a good job of conveying the idea that you’re a nut or a jerk or a loser or an idiot about parts of yourself that are important to you that you’ve started to really become demonstrably convinced of it yourself? All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Diagnostic question #29. Is there a demonstrated capacity and mechanism for genuine forgiveness in your relationship?If you stop caring whether your partner finds out or not, then an affair is a sign of your having taken practical steps to set in motion some course of action or lifestyle that definitely excludes your partner.

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay - Penguin Random House Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay - Penguin Random House

Diagnostic question #33. When the subject of intimacy comes up between you and your partner, is there generally a battle over what intimacy is and how to get it? You have to treat feelings carefully. They’re real and important but they can also be complicated and misleading.” Guideline #5 has a special importance for people who are in what clinicians refer to as dead or devitalized or roommate marriages, where the really bad thing that bothers them is that there doesn’t seem to be anything really good. Guideline #5 is a test for whether this is really the case. Some relationships are more cool and distant than others. But if there’s a positively pleasurable connection and you answered yes to question #5, then your relationship may not be as lifeless as you think.”No fairy dust here, but a real chance for healing what Kirshenbaum calls ‘the pain and waste of relationship ambivalence.’” My biggest take away was learning what love is. As cliche as it is, it’s not something I could definitively articulate. But Kirchenbaum laid the foundations for me.

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Sam Thomas Davies Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Sam

I just want to assure you that as you see what’s right for you to do, you’ll be able to put love into perspective among all the other things you care about.No wonder so many of us have trouble figuring out what’s best for us to do. But you can find the clarity you’re looking for if you want to. And I believe you do want to, and that you have everything it takes to see what’s best for you. And if you’ll be happiest leaving, you’ll get the reassurance that comes from finally understanding why your relationship has been too bad to stay in. When you end a relationship that deserves to end, you’re liberating two people to move on to better lives.

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Waterstones Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum -

You are not alone. There are 140 million Americans today in a relationship, and one-fifth of them—that’s 28 million people—just can’t decide whether to stay or leave. This is particularly true when it comes to our relationships. As one actress said on TV, being interviewed about her marriage, “You’re supposed to reevaluate your relationship every day, aren’t you?” Only if you want to confuse and exhaust yourself. We’re told so many contradictory things: to be responsible to ourselves and to our partner, to be happy in ourselves and to be mature about our obligations, to fix our own lives above all else, and to fix our relationships no matter what. Kirshenbaum says that if you’re in a relationship that seems both too good to leave and too bad to stay in, you’re in a state called relationship ambivalence . Disclosure: I doubted whether to add this book to my Goodreads collection, as the subject could be considered highly personal. However, reading books about relationships, or processes, doesn't necessarily mean that something is.. good... or.. bad... or... even happening. Reading books about zombies: does that make me want to eat human flesh? It wasn’t the most terrible marriage in the world. There was just a lot of unhappiness in it flowing from distance and discord. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best), Kate would’ve given it a 3. And yet she stayed in it, doing what she saw as her duty.Diagnostic question #10. Have you gotten to the point, when your partner says something, that you usually feel it’s more likely that he’s lying than that he’s telling the truth?