When To (Reluctantly) Call It Quits

​One of the hardest things is knowing when to call it quits with someone you deeply love, who deeply loves you. When you're both willing and dedicated to growth. When you're both authentically trying. Once upon a time, I thought those conditions meant that you should stay together, that such love and dedication, plus a willingness to work and grow, would always be enough: Not just enough but perhaps the best recipe, because that meant that you'd be able to grow through each other! The soul's journey!

I don't necessarily think that anymore.

Recently, I severed from someone like that — someone I still adore, and think I always will — because we just couldn't get there, even with the love, the capacity, and the willingness. It was one of the hardest calls I've ever made, and I'll also say this: When it finally landed, it was totally clear.

I won't go into the details, because it isn't only my story to tell. But I will offer what I've come to understand about the conditions under which even loving, well-intentioned relationships sometimes need to end. I'm drawing from my own experience and that of my clients. And when more than one of these is present, the challenges compound.

Unaddressed Mental Health Issues

This one is so hard. I like to say we all have our own corner of crazy — a flip way of acknowledging that we all land somewhere on the mental health spectrum, and we move along that line throughout our lives. But when at least one person in a relationship has conditions that affect their own life, and therefore their life with others, and won't address it — the relationship often eventually has to end.

The imbalances that result simply can't always be remedied without help. And the person with the condition has to be the one to choose to address it.

Radically Different Attachment Styles

Most of us are familiar with the anxious-avoidant dynamic. What I've observed is that when these patterns are extreme enough, they can be very hard to bridge. When one person falls too far in the insecure direction, it tends to push the other person further in the opposite direction, making things worse.

I've seen people in this dynamic break up, find partners who are more secure or share their attachment pattern, and watch their own anxieties ease considerably. That's because attachment styles don't live inside just one person — they're always a dynamic. We want to be with someone who isn't going to make our insecurity worse.

Radically Different Love Languages

If one person reaches for hugs constantly and the other deflects physical affection but quietly makes dinner every night, both people can end up feeling unmet and unappreciated, even when both are genuinely trying. Sexual discrepancies usually fall into this category too.

We can adjust our behavior to meet each other's needs, and it's also true that maintaining behavior that doesn't come naturally is genuinely hard to sustain over the long term. When stress hits — a family crisis, world events, personal exhaustion — it throws us off the conscious, consistent choices that require real effort. Two people who deeply love each other can both feel, on some level, unloved, if the way they give and receive love just doesn't match.

Codependence

When there's a mental health imbalance — including addiction — codependence often follows. But it can also emerge from the anxious-avoidant dynamic, from physical illness, or even from chronic patterns like underemployment. Codependence deserves its own conversation, and I've written about it more fully in another post. For now: it belongs on this list.

Ending relationships like these is particularly hard because everything in us screams that love + intention + capacity should be enough. The grief is real. The love is real. And yet.

On the other side of this choice can be real freedom, real expression, and a life that isn't filled with so much... trying.