Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits

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In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Romantic relationships are often a very big factor in how happy we are—and an unsatisfying relationship can reduce/impede happiness as much as a good one can increase it.

  • Today’s main feature looks at how to know whether something’s just a temporary slump or a rough patch and needs work, or whether it’s time to move on—yes, including with a lot of years clocked up together.

• Being unable to easily participate in spoken conversations is not just an inconvenience; it’s also a [causal, fixable] risk factor for age-related cognitive decline.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

• Today’s featured recipe is for coconut & lemongrass protein soup; with healthy MCTs from the coconut, as well as phytochemical benefits from the ginger and chili, this wonderfully refreshing soup has a lot to offer!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

Paulina Porizkova (Former Supermodel) Talks Menopause, Aging, & Appearances

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Psychology Sunday

Like A Ship Loves An Anchor?

Today’s article may seem a little bit of a downer to start with, but don’t worry, it picks up again too 😛 Simply put, we’ve written before about many of the good parts of relationships, e.g:

Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

…but what if that’s not what we have?

Note: if you have a very happy, secure, fulfilling, joyous relationship, then, great! Or if you’re single and happy, then, also great! Hopefully you will still find today’s feature of use if you find yourself advising a friend or family member one day. So without further ado, let’s get to it…

You may be familiar with the “sunk cost fallacy”; if not: it’s what happens when a person or group has already invested into a given thing, such that even though the thing is not going at all the way they hoped, they now want to continue trying to make that thing work, lest their previous investment be lost. But the truth is: if it’s not going to work, then the initial investment is already lost, and pouring out extra won’t help—it’ll just lose more.

That “investment” in a given thing could be money, time, energy, or (often the case) a combination of the above.

In the field of romance, the “sunk cost fallacy” keeps a lot of bad relationships going for longer than perhaps they should, and looking back (perhaps after a short adjustment period), the newly-single person says “why did I let that go on?” and vows to not make the same mistake again.

But that prompts the question: how can we know when it’s right to “keep working on it, because relationships do involve work”, as perfectly reasonable relationship advice often goes, and when it’s right to call it quits?

Should I stay or should I go?

Some questions for you (or perhaps a friend you might find yourself advising) to consider:

• What qualities do you consider the most important for a partner to have—and does your partner have them?

• If you described the worst of your relationship to a close friend, would that friend feel bad for you?

• Do you miss your partner when they’re away, or are you glad of the break? When they return, are they still glad to see you?

• If you weren’t already in this relationship, would you seek to enter it now? (This takes away sunk cost and allows a more neutral assessment)

• Do you feel completely safe with your partner (emotionally as well as physically), or must you tread carefully to avoid conflict?

• If your partner decided tomorrow that they didn’t want to be with you anymore and left, would that be just a heartbreak, or an exciting beginning of a new chapter in your life?

• What things would you generally consider dealbreakers in a relationship—and has your partner done any of them?

The last one can be surprising, by the way. We often see or hear of other people’s adverse relationship situations and think “I would never allow…” yet when we are in a relationship and in love, there’s a good chance that we might indeed allow—or rather, excuse, overlook, and forgive.

And, patience and forgiveness certainly aren’t inherently bad traits to have—it’s just good to deploy them consciously, and not merely be a doormat.

Either way, reflect (or advise your friend/family member to reflect, as applicable) on the “score” from the above questions.

• If the score is good, then maybe it really is just a rough patch, and the tools we link at the top and bottom of this article might help.

• If the score is bad, the relationship is bad, and no amount of historic love or miles clocked up together will change that. Sometimes it’s not even anyone’s fault; sometimes a relationship just ran its course, and now it’s time to accept that and turn to a new chapter.

“At my age…”

As we get older, it’s easy for that sunk cost fallacy to loom large. Inertia is heavy, the mutual entanglement of lives is far-reaching, and we might not feel we have the same energy for dating that we did when we were younger.

And there may sometimes be a statistical argument for “sticking it out” at least for a while, depending on where we are in the relationship, per this study (with 165,039 participants aged 20–76), which found:

Source: Development of Relationship Satisfaction Across the Life Span: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

And yet, when it comes to prospects for a new relationship…

• If our remaining life is growing shorter, then it’s definitely too short to spend in an unhappy relationship

• Maybe we really won’t find romance again… And maybe that’s ok, if w’re comfortable making our peace with that and finding joy in the rest of life _{^{(this widowed writer (hi, it’s me) plans to remain single now by preference, and her life is very full of purpose and beauty and joy and yes, even love—for family, friends, etc, plus the memory of my wonderful late beloved)}}

• Nevertheless, the simple fact is: many people do find what they go on to describe as their best relationship yet, late in life ← this study is with a small sample size, but in this case, even anecdotal evidence seems sufficient to make the claim reasonable; probably you personally know someone who has done so. If they can, so can you, if you so wish.

• Adding on to that last point… Later life relationships can also offer numerous significant advantages unique to such (albeit some different challenges too—but with the right person, those challenges are just a fun thing to tackle together). See for example:

An exploratory investigation into dating among later‐life women

And about those later-life relationships that do work? They look like this:

“We’ve Got This”: Middle-Aged and Older (ages 40–87) Couples’ Satisfying Relationships and We-Talk Promote Better Physiological, Relational, and Emotional Responses to Conflict

👆 this one looks like the title says it all, but it really doesn’t, and it’s very much worth at least reading the abstract, if not the entire paper—because it talks a lot about the characteristics that make for happy or unhappy relationships, and the effect that those things have on people. It really is very good, and quite an easy read.

See again: Healthy Relationship, Healthy Life

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between hazelnuts and almonds—it was closer than one might think, but ultimately we picked the almonds (click here to read about why), as did 87% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Recipes Worth Sharing

Coconut & Lemongrass Protein Soup

The main protein here is pea protein, but the soup's health benefits don't stop there. With healthy MCTs from the coconut, as well as phytochemical benefits from the ginger and chili, this wonderfully refreshing soup has a lot to offer:

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

Total Recovery: Solving the Mystery of Chronic Pain and Depression – by Dr. Gary Kaplan

First, know: Dr. Kaplan is an osteopath, and as such, will be mostly approaching things from that angle. That said, he is also board certified in other things too, including family medicine, so he’s by no means a “one-trick pony”, nor are there “when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail” problems to be found here. Instead, the scope of the book is quite broad.

Dr. Kaplan talks us through the diagnostic process that a doctor goes through when presented with a patient, what questions need to be asked and answered—and by this we mean the deeper technical questions, e.g. “what do these symptoms have in common”, and “what mechanism was at work when the pain become chronic”, not the very basic questions asked in the initial debriefing with the patient.

He also asks such questions (and questions like these get chapters devoted to them) as “what if physical traumas build up”, and “what if physical and emotional pain influence each other”, and then examines how to interrupt the vicious cycles that lead to deterioration of one’s condition.

The style of the book is very pop-science and often narrative in its presentation, giving lots of anecdotes to illustrate the principles. It’s a “sit down and read it cover-to-cover” book—or a chapter a day, whatever your preferred pace; the point is, it’s not a “dip directly to the part that answers your immediate question” book; it’s not a textbook or manual.

Bottom line: a lot of this work is about prompting the reader to ask the right questions to get to where we need to be, but there are many illustrative possible conclusions and practical advices to be found and given too, making this a useful read if you and/or a loved one suffers from chronic pain.

Click here to check out Total Recovery, and solve your own mysteries!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team