How To Recognize When You Should Move On?
By: Jun Wu
Tags: Relationships, Self, Friendship, Mental Health, Kindness

How To Recognize When You Should Move On?

Each time, when the turning point came, I moved on.

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I’ve been in a lot of toxic situations in my life. Perhaps I was good at dealing with them. Perhaps I was plagued by Stockholm’s Syndrome that I was drawn to them. But, at each point in my life, I recognized immediately when it’s time for me to move on. Sometimes, after the recognition, I will linger for a few days, sometimes a few years, then move on. The delay is partially due to this one question: “Should I trust my gut? Do I need more evidence?”

Most of the time, I didn’t need any more evidence. I had all the evidence I needed. But, I lingered because of a kind of emotional attachment to the situation.

Sometimes, habits make us attached to toxicity simply because we’ve performed the same actions day in and day out. It feels natural. It doesn’t mean that it’s right. It doesn’t mean that if you wait to leave, the relationship will suddenly start to feel healthy again.

The only way relationships change or improve for the better is if both parties acknowledge the toxicity and then try to fix it.

Otherwise, it can never be improved. It’s wise just to take leave.

Recently, I acknowledged some signs in my working relationships inside some communities.

These signs all point to one thing: it’s time for some distance.

Reciprocity

The biggest sign that points to a toxic relationship is that it’s severely uneven. When you are honestly engaging with people in communities, are they honest with you? When you are supporting them, are they supporting you?

These are the questions that I ask when I engage with people inside communities. There’s a kind of natural reciprocity that occurs when people like you.

Forced reciprocity simply make good relationship bad. It makes bad relationships worse.

Just imagine walking into a room with siblings fighting over a toy, then, you ask them to sit next to each other quietly for dinner.

Isn’t that kind of forced pretense a recipe for disaster?

Kindness

Communities only survive if there isn’t excessive competition. When a system pits one person against another, people often stop being kind to one another.

If people stop being kind to you, or you spot people being vicious to each other, it’s probably time to take a break.

Difficulties

Most good relationships are easy. They don’t require constant engagement. They fit into your day without too much “work”. The lasting relationships are the ones that naturally happen.

If you find that you have to go the “extra” mile with people or in communities to stay a member, then you probably need to find where you fit best.

Often, when you find a good fit, engagement feels easy and natural.

Drama

Good relationships are easy. But, good relationships are also consistent. They are boring in the fact that you can count on the relationship. In the boringness, a good relationship survives and thrives. It thrives on the trust that builds the foundations of the relationship.

When there’s excessive drama in a community or with a person, it is also an indication of ill fit.

Often, pegs might look round from a distance, at proximity, they are oval. When you are in close contact with excessive drama, your energy will be drained.

Your energy is your currency in life. Don’t let people rob you of that.

Courtesy

Good relationships are based on trust. There’s an inherent trust that assumes that people have courtesy in interactions. You care about how the other person reacts to your words and actions. At the same time, you will reciprocate the same kind of courtesy to the other person.

When you have given people your 100%, yet they can not treat you with common courtesy such as apologizing for mistakes, empathizing with you, or reciprocating kindness to your gestures of friendship, then it’s time to move away.

Bending Reality

In most of my relationships that have gone downhill, there’s one simple ingredient that persistently nagged me. Toward the end of the relationship, I often felt someone or a community was trying to change the reality that I believed in.

For instance, with a person, there’s a feeling that this person cornered me and started to interact with me every day so that I won’t interact with anyone else in the community.

Feeling cornered is just the start. Eventually, I find that all my friends in this community became that person’s friend and they no longer want to engage with me anymore.

This is how one person can bend reality toward themselves. In turn, they just changed your reality.

Inside a community, reality-bending takes the form of rumors, drama, and conspiracy theories. When there’s too much gaslighting going on, it’s probably time to move on.