Adam Cox

In the second timeline of can it be improved, there's always ways that you can improve a relationship.

So what if rather than making something bad good, you make something great even better?

Not a bad thought experiment to go through.

And then the third timeline...

of what if you were living life on your own?

Well, if that feels worse than either of the two previous timelines, it validates that you're in a great relationship and maybe that gives you a feeling of gratitude and a feeling of, right, you're not going to get complacent and you're going to invest more.

But let's say that that isn't the true.

If thinking of the status quo makes you feel miserable that you've got another 20, 30, 40 years of being in this relationship and it doesn't make you feel good, okay, then you know that you need to improve it.

And if you explore the idea of improving it and that doesn't feel even feasible or viable, then maybe it leads you to making a decision to end the relationship because it can't be improved.

And that's still an empowered thing to do.

A lot of people think that if a relationship ends, it's a failure.

You hear things in the media of like failed marriages.

It's a failure of a marriage to stay in a marriage that is incredibly toxic rather than to leave a marriage that is toxic to pursue something more empowering.

A failure is only a failure if it's the wrong thing to keep on doing.

But you hear these narratives, particularly historically, there's a lot of cultures, including Western cultures, where effectively it would be shameful to end a relationship, to get divorced.

So we have these kind of cultural narratives going on.

It's really, really important that whatever choice that you make, it comes from an empowered, positive choice for you.

And if that's to stay in a relationship, to improve the relationship or to end a relationship, it's really important that that comes from a place of absolute clarity.

Is it meeting your needs?

Can it be improved?