Matters of the heart

“You mean to say,” I asked, “that people don’t really want out of the relationship itself, they just want out of the dynamic?” “That’s right,” she said. “They don’t want to go away from the person, necessarily. They want away from the feeling.”

It means that if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. Even if someone you love is hurt by that.

Go, even though you don’t know exactly why you can’t stay. Go, because you want to. Because wanting to leave is enough. Get a pen. Write that last sentence on your palm—all three of you. Then read it over and over again until your tears have washed it away.

You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to bre