“I don’t know whether this has already crossed the line.
And I don’t want to tear down what we have.”

You hold only one end of the rope. That’s enough.

Between two people there’s a rope pulled tight and each of them holds one end. The tension you feel in your palm isn’t the other person’s pull. It’s the sum of both pulls, theirs and yours. But when the rope starts to cut, almost everyone starts with the other hand. For years they explain, plead, prove, go silent on purpose. They buy books the other one should read. The other side keeps holding on the same way, because they’re holding on for the same reason you are: not to lose something. And meanwhile the rope cuts into both of you.

Only one hand can change, and that’s yours. You can pull harder, let out slack, step aside, let go. It’s one half and it sounds like very little. Yet it redraws the whole rope, because the other end has to react somehow. Sometimes the tension eases and the relationship goes a different way. Sometimes it turns out nobody has been holding the other end for a long time. That’s an answer too, and a more useful one than another year of arguing.

Three situations people come to me with most often

1. “We stopped understanding each other.”

Mostly they didn’t stop understanding each other. They stopped saying things. First one uncomfortable thing, then another, and after a few years it’s a silent agreement about what doesn’t get talked about at home. What’s left are logistics sentences about school and the shopping. And because you both carry a list of grievances, the little that does get said is almost always about what the other one is doing wrong. Try to remember when you last said out loud what you’d like. Not what bothers you. What you want. Most people ask themselves this question and find they don’t have the answer ready even for themselves. When it drags on and hardens, people out there start calling it a toxic relationship. That word is everywhere these days and there’s one problem with it: it sounds like a diagnosis, but it doesn’t tell you anything. More useful than asking “is it toxic?” is naming what exactly happens between you, how often, and how much longer you want it.

2. “There was an affair.”

His, mine, ours. It comes to me from all three sides and every time two questions get mixed up in it: whose fault it is and what I want now. The first one is louder and leads nowhere, because you both know the answer anyway. The second one is quieter and it’s the only one you can work with. An affair tends to be an answer to something that went unsaid between you for a long time. That doesn’t excuse it. But it explains why so often you can’t just apologise afterwards and carry on. Staying and leaving are both legitimate answers after an affair and I won’t tell you which one is yours.

3. “It’s over and I can’t come to terms with it.”

One person wrote it to me exactly like this: my head knows it’s for the best, but my heart is working against me. With a divorce you spend a year on the paperwork, the flat and shared custody, and you expect that once it’s all done, it will fall away. It doesn’t fall away, because the empty space after someone isn’t settled at an office. And then there’s the sentence people write most reluctantly: I’m alone and I don’t want to be. Being alone after a breakup isn’t a punishment or a diagnosis. It’s an uncomfortably quiet place where, for the first time in years, you can find out what you actually want, before you quickly fill it up again.

What you can do about it now

Does this sound familiar?

The more you ticked, the more likely it isn’t about the other person. Almost every one of those sentences is about your end of the rope, and something can be done with that, even if the other one doesn’t lift a finger.

Where to next