What do you do when you dislike a dish prepared by someone you love dearly? You try a lot to eat it, but when you feel you cannot eat it anymore, you just bluntly tell that person and leave it.

Shouldn’t relationships also be this simple? Sometimes we get stuck with people whom we think we like but then when we actually start knowing them we realize that they are not the ones that make us happy. What should we do in that case? How should we gather the courage to just say “Bye” and walk out…

Unfortunately it’s not that easy in a relationship as compared to food. All relationships come with challenges and lots of emotional moments. There are moments when you are sure you want to end everything and never see that person again only to have that feeling pass over the next day. This back and forth keeps happening, making you confused about the relationship and generating lots of misery in your life.

My mom was in a conflicted relationship for a very long time. She was a simple small town girl married in a big city. She was already scared of the new environment and to make matters worse, my father was a drunk. He used to come home drunk everyday, abuse her and mentally torture her. She was very patient though, she would bear all this without letting us know of anything. We came to know only when we were grownup adults. But she didn’t have any backup or courage to walk out of this abusive relation. Eventually things got sorted, my father stopped drinking, he started caring and today they both are happy together. But this took away her youth and she did have to sacrifice a lot in the entire journey.

This is not a one off case, I have heard many such stories from many friends of how they bore the brunt of a conflicted relation for many years which resulted in a strengthened and more intimate relationship after a period of time. Such stories make you also wonder that whether I should stay    or walk away.

When you are living in this emotional turmoil and your brain is clouded with daily abuses, you cannot think clearly. How can you be sure of a rosy future when the present seems so gloomy?

I thought I would pen down some points to see if a relationship has any chances of success or it’s doomed to be a failure:

1. Make decision when you are in healthy state of mind. Don’t make it when you are already emotionally worn down. It’s very important to be rational because when you are emotional, there is a high probability that you would take a decision based on what you are feeling at that moment. It’s like ending a friendship because someone didn’t invite you for his or her birthday party only to realize next day that your friend truly forgot and didn’t mean to remove you from life.
2. Think why you want to end the relationship. This might sound cliché but it really helps to make a list of positives and negatives to see the overall picture. Physical, sexual or even emotional abuses are a clear reason to leave a relationship. In that scenario, decision shouldn’t be whether to leave or not, it should be how to leave safely.
3. Sometimes we feel that the love is so strong that we cannot see beyond it. A relationship should not be just about love, it should be about supporting you, making you strong in your life and career. You should be able to grow and breathe. Ask yourself if that is happening or not.
4. Think long term. Are the habits or stress of the other person affecting you negatively and constantly wearing you down? Long-term romance, hand-holding type scenes are only good in movies, realistically a relationship should be build on sharing values, support and experiences.
5. Think about yourself also. Have you been the ideal partner in the relationship? Is it possible that the other person is abusive because of your attitude to him/her? Sometimes we tend to ignore our own issues and just take the easy way to blame others. In this scenario, it is possible that the next relationship also that we get into will not be a happy one.
6. Lastly think about what you will miss about the person whom you are planning to leave. If that is something of no value then just walk away today!

These are just some points that I gathered after speaking to many different people who have been in a bad relationship. Some walked away and some stayed, but if you are confused then maybe these pointers will help you make a decision.