Summer Break And A Revisit

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Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope. As you may know, I took a break this summer from releasing new episodes so that I could take some time to rest and reflect and prepare for a brand new season of the podcast that starts next week. I can't believe how fast this summer went. So today I am revisiting one last episode in order to add what I think I missed the first time around, what I wish I had emphasized more. And with this particular episode, I think I framed the question a little too simply. Back then I was asking, when is it time to walk away? And today, I think the better question is to ask yourself, what is this relationship asking of me?

The Question Beneath Leaving

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Is it asking for more patience, better communication, clearer boundaries, more compassion? Or is the relationship asking me to finally choose myself? One of the biggest mistakes we can make is ending a relationship before we've taken a hard look at ourselves, before we've done our own inner work. Another is staying in a relationship long after we've done that work. Discernment is learning the difference. And that's really what this episode is about. Not every difficult relationship needs to end, but every relationship absolutely deserves an honest evaluation.

Regulate First Clarity Later

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One thing I'd also add today is that we should never make permanent relationship decisions from a dysregulated nervous system state. If you are flooded with anger, hurt, fear, resentment, your only job in that moment is to regulate. Clarity comes later. Boundaries come later, decisions come later. Trying to make any sort of decision from a place in which you are deeply dysregulated, you aren't thinking with clarity. So as you listen today, don't ask yourself, should I leave? Instead, ask yourself, what is this relationship trying to teach me? Sometimes the answer is how to hold a boundary. Sometimes it's how to communicate more honestly and more lovingly. Sometimes it's forgiveness. And yes, sometimes it's goodbye. But before you walk away, ask yourself, have I clearly communicated? Have I asked for what I need? Have I established healthy boundaries? Have I given the other person a genuine opportunity to respond? Sometimes the answer is yes. And sometimes we realize we've never really given the relationship a chance. One more important note everything I'm about to say in this episode assumes there is a foundation of basic emotional and physical safety. If abuse is present, the conversation changes completely. Safety comes first. With that said, I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Safety Caveat And New Season Tease

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And just a little teaser for next week's first brand new episode in a while, we are going to keep talking about this idea of walking away and why I think just let it go might be one of the worst pieces of advice we hear all the time. Because how often do you get that suggestion and think, but how? How do I actually do that? What if the question isn't, how do I let this go? What if the real question is, why can't I? So follow the show and don't miss next week's episode, where we'll look at the questions that can actually move you forward and how to have compassion for yourself when you're just not ready or not able to let something go. Yesterday

Red Flags And Why I Stay

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we talked about how sometimes being the bigger person means staying. It doesn't always mean walking away. But sometimes it really is time to walk away from relationships. So how do you know? Let's go over some of the big reasons why it might be time to let a relationship go. Me, not so much. I have a tendency to hang on for probably way longer, I can admit it than I should. And really, that stems from what else childhood stuff, right? I know what it's like to be abandoned. I know what it's like to be rejected. And I never want to be the cause of someone feeling that way. Yes, I know. I can't make anyone else feel anything without their permission. That's a whole other episode. But let's be real. We know that our actions impact other people. And I just never want to be part of making someone feel unloved or abandoned. So I tend to hold on, even when relationships are toxic. However, that's not healthy. It's not healthy, and it's something I've really had to kind of like work through and wrap my head around. It takes a lot for me to be able to end a relationship. So I think it's important to recognize that sometimes it is appropriate to walk away. And I want to go over some of the big reasons, you know, some of the big red flags that say maybe now's the time. Now, look, this is not a complete list. It's also not a checklist. You know, you might be in relationships where one or more of these things is true, but that doesn't absolutely mean it's time for you to go. Some things we can come back from. Sometimes open, honest communication can heal deep wounds. Both people have to participate, both have to be willing to change, both have to acknowledge that the problem is the problem, not the other person. And of course, severity matters. You know, there's a difference between telling your spouse a little quote-unquote white lie, like you went out with the girls, but really you just went shopping by yourself because you needed some quiet time, and having an affair, right? There are there's a vast uh, there's a spectrum. So, with all those caveats understood, let's dive in. So

Abuse And Disrespect Are Deal Breakers

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let's begin by just getting the most obvious one out of the way: physical abuse. It is never okay. It's never warranted, it is always a reason to walk away. Now, some people actually give me a little pushback on that because what if the person is only physically abusive when they drink, for instance? Well, do they drink every day? If it's a problem, it's a problem. If it's happened once, there is propensity for it to happen again. And help needs to be sought. Now, look, we can love people through their challenges, but sometimes we need to love them from afar. And keeping ourselves safe is paramount. This can be really hard, which is why getting support from friends, from family, from community is so important and necessary. But physical abuse, it's a deal breaker. This is something that really needs to get addressed immediately and resolved before at least physical proximity, let alone emotional proximity, can be considered. Similarly, emotional abuse. If you are in relationship, and this could be, you know, spouse, but it could also just be friendships, where you are constantly disrespected or humiliated, belittled, condescended to, like that's not okay. Even if it's quote unquote only in private, it's still not okay. This breaks people down into shells of themselves. What we need is the opposite. We need to feel supported and loved. We need people in our lives who build us up, who say, I believe in you, you've got this. Our friends, our spouse, you know, they should be our biggest cheerleaders, not the external expression of our inner fears and doubts. And I know this can get tricky because, you know, sometimes in families, for instance, parents, you know, we can go against their expectations. They can want us, I mean, goodness for me, right? I was supposed to be a concert violinist and a lawyer. That was the life path that my parents wanted for me. So being able to say to them, nope, sorry, I'm not going to law school. I'm just going to go learn how to teach Pilates and run a small fitness studio, like that was not well received. That was an immediate cause for I'm wasting my life, I'm ruining things, you know, why did they spend all that money on my education? If all I'm going to do is quote unquote just that, they made it very clear that I was making very bad choices and what a disappointment I was yet again. That is not supportive. You know, it's okay to express your opinion over someone else's actions, but there are loving ways to do that and really hurtful ways to do that. So in some situations, it's very difficult to walk away. And after we go over these reasons why we might want to, we'll talk about some of the things you can do if you feel like you can't. But before we do that, let's move on to number three.

When Trust And Safety Are Gone

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Which in some ways is really closely connected to emotional abuse. So number three is not having any safety or trust in the relationship. You know, this could be everything from what we were just speaking to, this sense of not being able to be yourself with someone to having someone actually infringe upon your trust, something like an infidelity or gambling all the money away or something like that. You know, do you have people in your life that you can't be fully honest with who you feel like you have to hide either all or parts of yourself from? You know, there are levels here. Certain friends can bring out certain aspects of ourselves, and that can be kind of beautiful. I think one of the big disservices we do is when we expect our spouse, for instance, to be our everything, to fill every need. They don't have to do that in order for you to have a really incredible solid marriage. I don't need my husband to go on meditation retreats with me. I have awesome friends to do that with. I don't need all of my friends to want to go, you know, do a sweat lodge with me. Some are going to be into it, some not. And let's be clear that you don't need to have to share every aspect of your life with everyone in your life in order for you to have safety or trust. What I'm talking about here is when you are afraid to talk about parts of yourself with those people, when you feel like you're gonna have lunch with this person and you need to be on guard, you need to be careful that you don't let some opinion of yours slip, right? When you don't want to mention that you went to a meditation retreat because you're afraid they're gonna judge you for that. You don't want to mention who you voted for because you think they will disown you. You know, these aren't reasons to just point blank end the relationship, but it may mean that you need to reassess the quality of that relationship. You know, part of this is about having a strong emotional connection, to feel safe enough to be vulnerable, which is not going to happen if you don't trust the person to love and hold all aspects of you. If you have to subvert who you really are, pretend to be someone you're not in order to be loved, might be time to walk away.

Communication Breakdowns And One-Sided Effort

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Another thing that we want to be watchful of is an inability to effectively communicate. Look, we all get tongue-tied sometimes. You know, we all have trouble finding the words to communicate sometimes. But in order for a relationship to work, we have to be able to communicate. And this can be hindered if we have not done the inner work, if we haven't sorted through our baggage from the past, for instance, if we haven't figured out why we get triggered when the other person shows up five minutes late to lunch, or if they don't call when they're going to be late, or whatever. If we're unable to communicate what's going on with us, if this other person is unable to communicate what's going on with them, it makes it exceptionally difficult to fix issues. Which brings me to number five, which is that relationships require effort from both sides. It takes two to tango. There's only so much one person can do. At some point, we have to acknowledge when a relationship is no longer aligned with us. We recognize it. We say, I've done everything I can, I've worked, I've adjusted, I've met you where you're at, but it's not working for me. You're not meeting me where I am. I need you to put in effort too. And if you won't, I'll have to leave, not out of anger or resentment, but because I refuse to live in a way that feels unfulfilling and inauthentic. Sometimes in relationships, one person grows while the other person doesn't. And sometimes that's okay. One person might be providing stability while the other evolves, and it remains mutually supportive and mutually loving. But other times we grow in different directions. We realize we've spent so much energy preserving the other person's comfort that we've lost touch with our own truth. And when that happens, we have to be willing to walk away. Not to punish or teach a lesson, but we because we've learned our own value. We've learned who we really are and what we really need. Someone wisely said, I don't walk away to teach people a lesson. I walk away because I learned mine. I'd rather adjust my life to your absence than adjust my boundaries to accommodate your disrespect. And disrespect doesn't have to be overt, it can simply be a refusal to take accountability to one's own mistakes and to one's own role that they play in the relationship. In the end, choosing ourselves isn't selfish. It's necessary.

Boundaries And Self-Compassion When Stuck

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Just briefly, I think it's important to note that the presence of one or more of these red flags does not necessarily mean that we absolutely must walk away. Sometimes, yes, 100% it does. But sometimes all that's required of us is re-establishing really solid boundaries. Sometimes just firming up our boundaries is what's needed for us to be able to maintain relationship with, you know, that family member that drives us crazy. Now, I am certain that we will do a whole episode, probably many, on boundary setting. But for now, you know, it can be something as simple as limiting how much time you spend with that person. It could be something as simple as bookending the experience, meaning that you have like one friend that you talk to who kind of hypes you up on the way in and is like, you can do this, you're gonna get through this. Remember to do these three things when you know your crazy uncle starts spouting off his racist rhetoric, and then have another friend that you call on the way out who helps you kind of process the whole thing and how it went and how you're feeling. You know, sometimes that's enough. Sometimes just having other relationships that are super supportive can help us really get through that challenging interaction if we either can't walk away or we're not ready to. And that's a really important other aspect of this to acknowledge. Sometimes we're just not ready to walk away. And that has to be okay. We need to acknowledge, we need to give ourselves some, you know, self-compassion for our inability to walk away from relationships that aren't serving us. It's important that we wait until we are really ready. You know, if this person has been in your life for decades or whatever, if they have meant so much to you at a certain point in your life, I would hope that you wouldn't just throw them away without really seriously considering, really seeing if there was something that you could do to mend the relationship. If it matters deeply to you, then it deserves reverence. It deserves time, it deserves you thinking about how can I make this work? Is there any way that I can make this work? And once you've done that, once you're really ready, if the answer is no, then you walk away. So

Recap Subscribe And Final Thoughts

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just to recap, the five big reasons why you might want to end a relationship: physical abuse, emotional abuse, not having safety or trust in the relationship, having an inability to effectively communicate, and not having mutual reciprocal effort. But note what I did not say, which is having different opinions. And that's what we're gonna start next week off discussing. Like or subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss it. Have a great weekend, and remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.