While you may have fallen in love with you partner when you first started dating, that is most likely because in reality, they were loving, respectful, had similar values and goals, etc. Your feelings of love were based on real gestures and acts of love. The premise of this book is that trying to weigh the options of leaving or staying in a relationship is a losing game...but it's also what most of us do when we feel uncertain about the relationship we are in. A relationship can feel good one day and bad the next, so it is almost impossible to weigh the good against the bad. Diagnostic question #23. With your new, more complete, more realistic set of information about what it would be like to leave, have you discovered new, more probable realities that now make leaving seem easier, more attractive, and make staying no longer desirable?

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help

Diagnostic question #20. Is there a clearly formulated, passionately held difference between you that has to do with the shape and texture and quality of your life as you actually experience it? I imagine most readers of Mira Kirshenbaum's "Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay" are leaning towards the going. Most of us tend not to mess with the good, or spend time analyzing why we feel bliss; rather we seek out deeper understanding only when something hurts. Human nature, I suppose. Take notice only when life becomes a pain. But as I read Kirshenbaum's easy to absorb guide on fencesitting relationships, I realized this is a good read even for the best of relationships. Even for those currently between relationships. Why not gain understanding as a preventative measure and avoid the iffy relationship entirely?If u can relate to the title then this is a must read. I read it in 3 days. While i left the book still feeling 50/50 about the relationship, it was a logical, well informed 50/50 rather than a previously confused state. The book goes through a series of diagnostic questions to provide clarity on whether an “iffy” relationship is "too good to leave or too bad to stay", with plenty of examples & case studies. At the end of the book, the author lists additional resources (books) on how to move on if you chose to go; and another list on how to strengthen your relationship & improve communication if you chose to stay. The book itself is nicely set up, although some parts get a bit repetitive over time. I have the feeling that some paragraphs here and there could be edited out, without sacrificing the message or style. But that's highly personal... Diagnostic question #13. Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Waterstones Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum -

You have to treat feelings carefully. They’re real and important but they can also be complicated and misleading.” A guideline that says your relationship is too bad to stay in overrules any guidelines that say your relationship is too good to leave. Just because other questions don’t point you toward the exits doesn’t change the fact that your answer to this particular question does point you toward the exits. One clear negative sign is all you need, and it doesn’t matter what all the other signs say.” Diagnostic question #33. When the subject of intimacy comes up between you and your partner, is there generally a battle over what intimacy is and how to get it? A relationship where you feel demeaned, where there is no trust, or where there is a constant threat of physical violence should be left, regardless of the good things it has going for it. It's easy to convince yourself that the good offsets the bad, but some things are simply too bad to put up with, and significantly predict unhappiness.

Success!

When you feel ambivalent about your partner, you take distance from them. You spend less time together. You talk less and about less important things. You stop doing things together. There’s a cool, formal, ritualistic quality to the relationship. You take distance from your partner because you’re having an emotionally intense affair with your own ambivalence. Few have written with such common sense and clarity about how to come out of the trap of ambivalence in marriage. I’ve recommended the book to colleagues and clients.”—Cloé Madanes, co-founder, The Family Therapy Institute

TOO GOOD TO LEAVE, TOO BAD TO STAY: How To Make The Perfect Decision TOO GOOD TO LEAVE, TOO BAD TO STAY: How To Make The Perfect

The balance-scale approach—piling up all the evidence for staying and against leavin g—doesn’t work for anybody.

Books Mentioned

Diagnostic question #29. Is there a demonstrated capacity and mechanism for genuine forgiveness in your relationship?

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Sam Thomas Davies Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum - Sam

Guideline #5 has a special importance for people who are in what clinicians refer to as dead or devitalized or roommate marriages, where the really bad thing that bothers them is that there doesn’t seem to be anything really good. Guideline #5 is a test for whether this is really the case. Some relationships are more cool and distant than others. But if there’s a positively pleasurable connection and you answered yes to question #5, then your relationship may not be as lifeless as you think.” Diagnostic question #7. Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want; and is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated; and if you ever do get what you want, is getting it such an ordeal that you don’t feel it was worth all the effort? How do your relatives feel about what you’re wanting to do? Will they provide moral support? Perhaps more important, will they actually deliver the practical or financial support they might have been promising?

17. Issue: Intimacy—How It Feels to Be Close

Diagnostic question #24. Does your partner do such a good job of conveying the idea that you’re a nut or a jerk or a loser or an idiot about parts of yourself that are important to you that you’ve started to really become demonstrably convinced of it yourself? That is, love is a feeling based on reality. The problem arises when people are ambivalent about their relationship. Should I stay or should I go? One another reason people struggle with their decision is that they still love their partner. And that’s where emotions take over.