Why Do We Stay in Situations That We Know Aren’t Working?

There is a deep discomfort that comes from knowing something is not working, while simultaneously feeling completely unable to change it.

You know the friendship has become one sided, but you keep answering their messages. You’re painfully aware that your job is making you miserable, but every Sunday night you tell yourself that next year might be different. Your body aches, knowing a relationship is no longer making you happy, but you cannot imagine leaving it. You see that you need to set a boundary with someone, yet every time you think about doing it, you convince yourself that perhaps you are being unreasonable.

Sometimes you even know exactly what you would tell someone else in the same situation. You would tell your friend that they deserve better, tell them that they cannot keep living like this. You would reasons with them that staying somewhere simply because it is familiar is not the same thing as choosing it.

However, when it is your life, things suddenly become much more complicated.

This is because knowing something is not working and feeling ready to do something about it are two very different psychological experiences.

We often assume that if something is causing us pain, we will naturally want to leave it behind. However, humans are not particularly good at choosing between pain and no pain. Much more often, we are choosing between familiar pain and unfamiliar uncertainty, and familiar pain can feel surprisingly safe.

A relationship that leaves you feeling lonely may still provide companionship, history, financial security, shared friends, a home, or the comfort of knowing what tomorrow will look like. A friendship that has become draining may still contain years of memories and moments when the person made you feel understood. A job that you hate may still provide an income, routine and a sense of identity.

Even habits that make us unhappy can offer something psychologically useful.

Overworking can protect us from having to think about what we actually want. Constantly checking our phone can distract us from uncomfortable feelings. People pleasing can help us avoid rejection. Staying busy can prevent us from noticing how unhappy we have become. This list could go on.

It often means that situations are doing more than one thing for us, that multifaceted and something can be painful and protective at the same time. This is one of the reasons people can stay in situations for years while simultaneously knowing that they want something different. From the outside, it can look like indecision, weakness or even a lack of self respect. However, from the inside, it often feels much more like being trapped between the fear of staying vs the fear of leaving.

The fear of staying might sound like, ‘What if nothing ever changes?’

The fear of leaving might sound like, ‘What if I have made a terrible mistake?’

Particularly when there is no guarantee that leaving will make things better, staying can begin to feel like the safer option.

There is another reason we can become stuck, which is that we tend to overvalue what we have already invested.

You might think, ‘I have spent ten years in this relationship.’

Or, ‘I have worked so hard to get this career.’

Or, ‘We have been friends since school.’

But this is sunk cost fallacy in action, the amount of time you have invested in something does not necessarily tell you whether it is still right for you.

Sometimes we continue because walking away would mean admitting that something we once chose is no longer something we would choose today, and that can be incredibly painful.

We also tend to wait for certainty before making difficult decisions. We want to know that leaving is definitely right, that changing careers will definitely make us happier, that setting the boundary will definitely improve the relationship, that saying no will not cause someone to leave us. Unfortunately, certainty is rarely available.

Sometimes the decision between two difficult options, and the question becomes which difficulty you are more willing to live with? This is where it can be useful to stop asking yourself, ‘Should I leave?’

Instead, try asking a slightly different question.

‘If nothing about this situation changed, would I be happy to still be living with it in one year?’

Then imagine five years.

This is not to frighten yourself into making a decision, but an exercise to help you remove the fantasy that things will inevitably change simply because you are hoping they will.

If the answer is no, you do not necessarily need to make a dramatic decision tomorrow. You might simply need to identify what you are avoiding. What are you afraid would happen if you changed something? What would you lose? What would you gain? What part of your current situation is genuinely valuable, and what part are you staying in because it is familiar? Perhaps most importantly, what is one small thing you could change without having to change everything?

You might have the conversation you have been avoiding, you might update your CV.

Maybe you’ll stop saying yes automatically, or spend less time with someone who consistently leaves you feeling depleted. Maybe you will finally admit to yourself that something is not working, without immediately demanding that you know exactly what to do about it.

Change begins with telling yourself the truth. You do not need to have the whole future worked out before you are allowed to take the first step.