Leaving a difficult relationship

The decision to leave a relationship in which you have genuinely loved someone is one of the hardest a human being makes — complicated by attachment, by hope, by the sunk cost of years, and often by genuine love coexisting with genuine harm. The traditions offer less guidance here than they do on entering love, perhaps because leaving requires a kind of self-knowledge that is harder to codify. This domain examines what the decision actually involves, what supports it, and what follows.