“If you’ve suspected that it’s not good for you to stay up in the air, you’re right. Staying ambivalent, in fact, can cause tremendous damage. Being stuck like this can end up killing you emotionally if you stay when you should be getting out. And it can end up killing your relationship if you keep thinking about leaving when it could be fixed if you only put energy into it. You can end up being deprived of joy and of freedom, of intimacy and of hope. And it’s not as if waiting around is going to show you what’s best for you. Ambivalence doesn’t produce real answers. It’s just a dangerous trap…So it’s not only professionally but personally that I’ve experienced the terrible price we all pay for not knowing what to do with our relationships, all the pain and wasted time millions of people suffer from staying endlessly undecided.”
(pp. 7-8)

“Kate was terribly unhappy for forty years…She waited for one milepost after another to pass—the kids starting school, her going back to work, the kids leaving home, her husband’s retiring—hoping that she’d get a sign that would tell her what to do. Just think about what it must have been like to spend all those years thinking about leaving. It meant spending years stewing over all the things that were wrong with him and all the things that were wrong with her for staying with him. You pay a price for feasting on negativity like this.”

“Suppose that it would have been best for Kate to leave. To live with all that negativity and not leave could only destroy your sense of yourself as a valuable, effective person. Or suppose that it would have been best for her to stay. Then living with all that negativity could only pollute and ultimately destroy what would otherwise be a viable marriage. Kate paid another price for a lifetime of not deciding. The tension and misery she felt, directly traceable to living stuck in ambivalence, put a strain on her relationship with her children that took years to heal.”

“The woman I call ‘Kate’ is my mother…and her husband was my stepfather…And in her ambivalence she’s like far too many of our parents, far too many people in middle age, and far too many people just starting out. I wrote this book to save others, to save you, from going through what my mother went through.” (pp. 8-9)

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay is a book that I have recommended to countless patients over the 30 years since it was published in 1997. She begins the book by addressing the long-term damage of remaining in what she calls “relationship ambivalence,” which happens “when the bulk of your attention shifts from being in your relationship to trying to figure out whether to stay in it or leave.” (p. 13).

“Ambivalence in your heart,” she writes, “goes hand in hand with distance in your relationship. When you feel ambivalent about your partner you make distance from your partner. You spend less time together. You talk less, and about less important things. You stop doing things together. There’s a cool, formal, ritualistic quality to the relationship. You make distance from your partner because you’re having an emotionally intense affair with your own ambivalence. And like all the other things you do in your ambivalence, distance only serves to make it worse. Now your ambivalence has taken on a life of its own.” (p. 18)

“I discovered,” Kirshenbaum adds, “that everyone stuck in relationship ambivalence shares an image so powerful, so controlling, that it shapes their entire experience of deciding what to do about an iffy relationship: the image of a balance scale. You know—the kind of scale the figure of Justice holds in her hand in front of the Supreme Court, with a pan on one side and a pan on the other side, all set up for weighing the evidence, pro and con.”

“The image of the balance scale lies at the heart of how most people deal with the stay-or-leave decision. It’s what I call the balance-scale approach. You try to figure out whether to stay or leave by piling up all the evidence about your partner on a kind of giant scale and seeing how it balances out: On one side you pile up all the evidence for staying and against leaving: all the good things about your relationship, all the things you hope for, all the things that make leaving seem scary.”

“On the other side you pile up all the evidence for leaving and against staying: all the bad things in the relationship, all your fears, all your hopes for being on your own again. All by yourself, you do what the opposing lawyers do at a trial, each lawyer piling up evidence on one side or the other. Then after acting as lawyer for both sides, you act as the jury, looking to see which pile of evidence weighs more. It’s instinctive. It’s universal. And it’s guaranteed to drive you crazy.” (p. 19)

“When it comes to relationships,” Kirshenbaum states, “the balance-scale approach is the problem, not the solution. It gets us into trouble, not out of it. How can you weigh the things you know about your relationship in the present against a huge uncertain future?…With the balance-scale approach pieces of evidence keep sliding in and out of the picture. You try to add things up that don’t add up, to compare things that can’t be compared. Like a tenderfoot in the woods, the more you try to find your way, the more lost you get…Weighing the pros and cons just sucks you in to adding more and more things to the balance, and every time you add something the picture gets more confusing…The balance-scale approach doesn’t work for anybody. I don’t think you’d be reading these words if the balance-scale approach had worked for you.” (pp. 19-21)

Having clearly defined the problem, Kirshenbaum then offers her solution. She writes, “Here’s how you find your way out of relationship ambivalence. Don’t put your relationship on trial the way lawyers do. Make a diagnosis the way doctors do. That’s what we’ll do here. We’ll ask one question at a time, step by step, responsibly searching for that one fact, that one piece of evidence about your relationship that makes clear what’s best for you to do. And it’s all based on what research shows are the experiences of other people in situations like yours.” (p. 25)

For the remainder of her book, Kirshenbaum asks 36 Diagnostic Questions about your relationship, each followed by a Guideline. Diagnostic question #1 states, “Think about that time when things between you and your partner were at their best. Looking back, would you now say that things were really very good between you then?” Thus Guideline #1 states, “If, when your relationship was at its ‘best,’ things between you didn’t feel right or work well, the prognosis is poor. I feel comfortable saying that you’ll feel you’ve discovered what’s right for you if you choose to leave. Quick take: If it never was very good, it’ll never be very good.”
(pp. 27-31)

Diagnostic question #2 states, “Has there been more than one incident of physical violence in your relationship?” Kirshenbaum follows this question with Guideline #2: “Abuse that happens more than once means you must leave the relationship. Otherwise it will happen again and again, and it will get worse, and your self-esteem will fall, and your sense of being trapped will grow, and you’ll wish you’d started the process of getting out right now, however much you love the person and whatever the pluses in your relationship. The only exception to this is when the abusive partner is currently, actively, and motivatedly participating in a program designed to treat abusive partners and stays in the program for at least a year. Quick take:
Physical abuse means love is dead.” (pp. 36-37)

Diagnostic question #4 states, “If God or some omniscient being said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?” Guideline #4 follows: “Imagine how you’d feel if God or some omniscient being said you had permission to leave your relationship if you wanted to. If this suddenly gives you a strong sense that it’s all right for you to end your relationship, you’ll most likely feel you’ve discovered what’s best for you if you choose to leave. Quick take: If God’s saying ‘Hey, whatever you want is okay with me’ is all you’d need to feel it’s okay to leave, it’s okay to leave.” (pp. 49-50)

Next Kirshenbaum addresses the issue of couple’s therapy for your relationship. She makes a statement that I’ve shared with countless individuals and couples over many years. She writes,
“But you want to avoid falling back into relationship ambivalence. Here’s the test. If your experience with the therapist is ‘Gees, she’s really good’ and yet there’s no change after nine months in whatever it is that makes your relationship too bad to stay in, then you can feel confirmed in your sense that it’s most likely unchangeable. You’ll know you’ve done everything you could do. And that can make it easier to accept that you’ll be happier leaving the relationship.” (p. 52)

Kirshenbaum introduces a concept that I have shared with many patients: Off-the-table-itis. She writes, “Do you want to find a true villain in the drama of communication? Look at what I call off-the-table-itis. This comes from an expression people use in talking about negotiation. It refers to someone taking something ‘off the table’ when he doesn’t want to talk about an issue. Off-the-table-itis occurs when someone keeps taking things off the table, when someone keeps not wanting to talk about issues. Off-the-table-itis kills relationships. Or perhaps I should say partners with off-the-table-itis kill relationships.” (p. 94)

Thus we have “Diagnostic question #9: Does it seem to you that your partner generally and consistently blocks your attempts to bring up topics or raise questions, particularly about things you care about?” Here is her “Guideline #9: If your partner constantly and unyieldingly prevents you from talking about things that are important to you, so that you have a sense of being shut down and shut up, then you’re faced with a destructive problem that will not get better by itself. I feel comfortable saying you’ll be happiest if you leave.” (p. 99)

What, you might ask, does Kirshenbaum say about the importance of sex, regarding whether to stay or leave your marriage. Here’s her Diagnostic question #13: “Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?”

She elaborates: “I’m talking about things as elemental as kissing, hugging, stroking, holding hands, rubbing a neck, putting a hand on a leg, and any other form of touching that goes on in committed relationships. And in any of these ways, do you feel that you want your partner to touch you, even if it’s just holding hands? Do you wish your partner touched you more often? Are you happy when your partner touches you now? Or do you feel that your partner gives you the creeps physically and that you actively and affirmatively do not want him to touch you?”

Kirshenbaum continues: “All of these questions point to the basic issue of whether you and your partner are physically attracted to each other. Wanting to touch and wanting to be touched are the bedrock of the part of your physical relationship on which your emotional relationship builds.” Here’s her Guideline #13: “If either you or your partner has stopped wanting to touch the other or be touched by the other, and this goes on for several months without any sign of abating, then you’re making a profound statement about how alienated you are from each other, and based on the experience of other people in this situation you won’t be happy if you stay and you will be happy if you leave.” (pp. 132-133)

Diagnostic question #14 addresses another aspect of marital sexuality: “Do you feel a unique sexual attraction to your partner?” Kirshenbaum elaborates: “It’s not that they can’t imagine having sex with anyone else or that sex wouldn’t be good with anyone else or that the sex is even so unbelievably great with their partner. But for whatever reason there’s something sweet or safe or special or comfortable about their sexual relationship with that person that simply puts other people in a different category. Other people just don’t feel right to them. But this person does.”

Thus her Guideline #14 states: “if you feel a physical, sexual attraction to your partner that puts him or her in a special category for you, where you’re drawn to him or her strongly and in a way you’re not drawn to anyone else, then I feel comfortable saying you’ll be happy if you stay because most people in this situation are happy they stay, as long as there are no powerful reasons to leave.” (pp. 136-137)

John Gottman, the Seattle-based research psychologist, has written a book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. One of these seven principles is about the importance of “accepting influence” from one’s partner. He writes, “In our long-term study of 130 newlywed couples, now in its eighth year, we have found that, even in the first few months of marriage, men who allow their wives to influence them have happier marriages and are less likely to divorce than men who resist their wives’ influence. Statistically speaking, when a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81 percent chance that his marriage will self-destruct.” (p. 100)

Gottman adds, “It’s certainly just as important for wives to treat their husbands with honor and respect. But my data indicate that the vast majority of wives…already do that…It just means that they let their husbands influence their decision making by taking their opinions and feelings into account. But too often men do not return the favor.” Kirshenbaum has a similar take: “And I know that the lifeblood of a relationship is people feeling they can influence each other, particularly about really important things.”

Kirshenbaum continues: “Nothing works more powerfully to make people feel rage and create distance than the sense that they can’t influence their partner. And to influence someone is to get them to change, whether it’s getting them to go from being someone who never picks up his socks to being someone who almost always picks up his socks, or getting them to go from being someone who always picks on you to being someone who never picks on you.”

Here Kirshenbaum writes emphatically: “If I wanted to write a prescription for how to have a doomed relationship that was overwhelmingly too bad to stay in, I’d have both people say I can’t change, I won’t change, I don’t want to change, and I don’t see a reason to change…The point is that you’re entitled to feel you want your partner to change things about himself.”
(p. 140)

Here is her Diagnostic question #15: “Does your partner neither see nor admit things you’ve tried to get him to acknowledge that make your relationship too bad to stay in?” She adds, “Of course this kind of blind ignorance is annoying no matter what it’s about, but what I’m talking about here is your partner’s closing his eyes and mind to one of his problems that bores right through you like a bad headache when you think about the things that make your relationship too bad to stay in.”

Here is her Guideline #15: “If there’s something your partner does that makes your relationship too bad to stay in, and if you’ve tried to get him to acknowledge it and he simply cannot and does not, then that problem will just get worse over time. If the thought of a lifetime with it getting worse is not acceptable, you’ll be happiest if you leave. Quick take: If your partner can’t even see what it is about him that makes you want to get out, it’s time to get out.” (p. 144)

Kirshenbaum adds, “You’ve got to watch out for one of the slipperiest ways people refuse to acknowledge their problems: they get hurt. Your asking for acknowledgement makes them sad, discouraged, desperate. It seems to make them feel so bad about themselves, it’s such a blow to their ego, that you start getting the sense that even mentioning the problem makes things worse, not better. But what these people are really doing, consciously or unconsciously, is using emotional blackmail to convince you that night is day and that not dealing with a problem is a more effective way of handling it than dealing with it. Actually, they’re using a form of off-the-table-itis to prevent you from asking them to acknowledge their own problem.”
(p. 145)

Kirshenbaum states, “In a sense this a book about happiness. And for you taking care of your happiness means envisioning a lifetime with your partner not changing or changing only slightly. Then be honest with yourself about whether what you see is just an annoyance or disappointment or if it’s something you simply don’t want to spend the rest of your life living with. The question here is obvious: Diagnostic question #19: Has your partner violated what for you is a bottom line? Let’s go right to the Guideline #19: If you’ve made it clear what your bottom lines are and your partner has violated them anyway, then by definition you will not be happy if you stay and you will be happy if you leave. Quick take: The bottom line is the end of the line.” (p. 165)

Here is Kirshenbaum’s final question in her book: “Diagnostic question #36: If all the problems in your relationship were solved today, would you still feel ambivalent about whether to stay or leave?” Thus her final “Guideline #36: Even if there were no problems, if you still don’t know whether you want to be in this relationship, then you’re indicating a deep discomfort with something about your partner or your relationship. People who felt this way were happy they left and unhappy they stayed. Quick take: If you don’t know whether you want to stay even if nothing were wrong, then you don’t want to stay.” (pp. 271-272)