There’s a question that almost everyone has asked at one point or another…and almost no one knows how to answer.

“How do I know when it’s time to break up?”

There are times when we should stick to our guns and fight for our relationship…and there are other times when we’ve already stayed far past the relationship’s expiration date.

There’s no easy way to tell which one you’re in…but I have a few places you can start. 

The Warning Signs

Not every rough patch or moment of friction in a relationship is a sign that it needs to end—in fact, a lot of them aren’t.

Relationships take work. Everyone knows this. But the kind of work they take is different depending on whether it’s a fixable dynamic or something you need to let go of.

There are plenty of warning signs that will pop up when something’s off in your relationship.

If you’re the one who’s always checking in with your friends about your relationship and your feelings toward it—aka, “Is this normal? Am I overreacting? Am I overthinking it? Is it okay that we’re fighting this much?” etc, etc, etc—that’s a warning sign.

If you’re chronically Googling “Should I break up with my partner?” or “How do I know when it’s time to leave” or anything similar, that’s a warning sign.

If you’re feeling super drained by your relationship because you feel like it has been pushing shit uphill for ages—you’re not just going through a little bit of a rough patch at this point, because it’s been hard for quite some time—then that’s a warning sign.

Like I said, relationships are challenging at times—no one’s denying that. But they shouldn’t be extremely, extremely difficult. You shouldn’t feel like you’re swimming upstream a lot of the time.

Struggles Vs. Deal Breakers

So, we know every single relationship has its struggles. Every relationship has friction points to work through. Having arguments doesn’t mean that your relationship is automatically doomed…but there is a difference between normal struggles and straight-up fucking deal breakers. 

Normal struggles look like a difference in communication style, a difference in everyday life (for example, how you load the dishwasher, or how you divvy up chores), navigating a major life change together (such as becoming parents or losing a job), etcetera.

You’re going to have challenges and differences, and that’s fine. But if you’re having constant arguments about serious value differences, feel like you’re walking on eggshells all the time, having your vulnerability turned back on you as a weapon, or experiencing a massive lack of trust…those are big deal-breakers.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Still not sure? Ask yourself this:

Why do you want to be in this relationship?

Are you staying out of fear of being alone?  Are you staying because you don’t want to “give up” and end up with another “failed” relationship under your belt?

I put “failed” in quotes because I truly believe that the only failure we can truly have in relationships is staying in one even when we’re fucking miserable.

This leads to something called the sunk cost fallacy. It’s that feeling of, “I’ve already put so much time into this that it feels like breaking up would be a waste. I’ve already put six years into this; I don’t want to throw that all away.”

So, what…you’d rather spend another six years absolutely miserable?  Make that make sense.

If you’re this unhappy, the relationship is already fucking gone, babe.

People get very trapped in the idea of, “I just want it to be like it was in the beginning.”

It’s never going to be like the first month you met each other again, okay? It’s just not.

My best friend and I were just discussing how there’s no high like the first couple of weeks of dating someone.

We’re both in healthy relationships. She’s engaged. And it’s very fun, it’s wonderful…but it’s never going to feel like that first hit again.

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t get to feel blissful. That doesn’t mean you’ll never experience novelty and excitement and love and passion in a healthy, long-term relationship. It’s just not how it was when you first met, because you know so much more about this person than you did then.

Let go of it needing to be like that again. If it was like that for three months and now you’ve been together three years, and the rest of the relationship has been shit…what exactly are you fighting for?

It’s like someone losing shitloads in the stock market and then saying,  “I’m going to put more into the same stock that’s done fuck-all for five years.”

Sure, it could go back up…but what are the chances of that?

Don’t stay in a dead-end relationship because of the sunk cost fallacy, because that’s all it is—it’s a fallacy. It’s not real.

You don’t want to sink your energy and your love and your time and your heart into a relationship that has no return on investment for you. That’s the biggest waste of time I can imagine.

Look at the Logic

Ultimately, if you’re going to stay and fight for this relationship, you need to be able to envision a future together.

Not everything is going to align. You might like pizza, he might like Thai food, and that’s fine.  You can have different hobbies. You can have different interests. But when it comes to fundamental things—for instance, you might want to raise their kids in church, but the person you’re dating is an atheist, or vice versa—mm, that’s probably not going to work.

And one more thing: at the end of the day, you can love someone and still decide they’re not right for you. You can let someone go with grace and love and compassion and know that they’re not for you, and you can let that just be a chapter in your life.

Not every relationship is meant to last a lifetime.  You’ll have people your life that were there for a season just to teach you something. And that gets to be fine. It does not have to put an end to your dream of having a healthy, lasting relationship.

WORK WITH MICHELLE: 

Join The EXPERIENCE, a year-long mentorship for the woman who wants to play in the frequency of big love, epic sex and mind-blowing relationships with men…and herself: https://michellepanning.com/the-experience

Ready to finally take action to transform your life in 2025? Apply for one-to-one mentorship with me: https://form.jotform.com/230497122673457

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com