Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship

I thought I should wait a bit before writing this review. I was in that horrible twisted conflicted place of feeling sure I needed to leave my marriage, but not sure and dragged down by emotional exhaustion, inertia, and fear. This book asks important diagnostic questions, gives case study examples, and then sums up the conclusions you could draw in a guideline. If you really go chapter by chapter, answering the questions honestly for yourself, and do the recommended listing exercise, I feel sure anyone can parse through their feelings of love/despair/ambivalence/trappedness/uncertainty and come out on the other side. MIra Kirshenbaum doesn't presume to know anyone's truth or tolerances or what is too much to live with or too little to keep their marriage going - that's why it's so perfect as a tool. If this one thing is bad enough, that's reason enough even if all the other things are "fine." She uses this analogy (p. 60): "Suppose you were trying to decide whether to stay in your house or move. An incredible view or an ideal layout might make your house too good to leave and might outweigh a lot of negatives. But they don't counteract your house being sandwiched between a slaughterhouse and a cement factory. They don't counteract your house's foundation having been completely eaten away by termites. They don't counteract your living in a flood plane. It's a kind of rule in life. A lot of good stuff might make us willing to put up with some bad stuff. But any really terrible stuff has veto power over a ton of good stuff." Kirshenbaum leaves it up to you to put the good and bad on the scales and determine which direction they tip, but the chapters help you isolate separate issues which are too easily conflated or combined in the heat of resentment, anger, or fear. She says on page 165: "In a sense this is a book about happiness. And for you taking care of your happiness means envisioning a lifetime with your partner not changing or changing only slightly. Then be honest with yourself about whether what you see is just an annoyance or disappointment or if it's something you simply don't want to spend the rest of your life living with." A commenter on an advice blog I also turn to asked this question which I have never forgotten: If things stayed exactly like they are now, would you stay: Another month? Another 6 months? Another year? Another 5 years? How long? This book helps you tease out what your relationship is like right now, and helps you answer those questions. If even just reading "six months" makes you shake the bars of your cage, this book is for you. It got me out of my unhappy marriage, and I would recommend it to anyone feeling that churning awfulness in your chest, that cognitive dissonance between what you think you "should" do and what your gut is telling you that you need to do. Take notes, mark passages, talk to your friends, your therapist, but buy this book if you're stuck.

Everyone should read this book, no matter whether they're inside a relationship or outside of it. It teaches you very powerful and important wisdom, and will help you learn how to be happier. The book is sincere, honest and sensible. Everything she says comes with a good explanation and examples. It is easy and very interesting to read. I recommend this book to every person who enjoys personal growth, knowledge and wisdom, but especially to those who are in a relationship with someone they love but doesn't make them happy. Another reviewer (who hasn't even read the book) has tried to analyze the "statistics" of the reviews, but I'm afraid her approach lacked intelligence, so let me analyze it in a smarter way for you: 1. Most people giving positive reviews left their relationships, but some stayed. (This means nothing, just that people who are happy in their relationships simply don't read this book because they don't need to) 2. EVERYONE who gave negative reviews stayed in their relationships. This means that NOBODY who left their relationships has given a negative review. This means everyone who heeded the book's advice, when it pointed towards leaving, chose correctly and hasn't regretted leaving. Some people have said this book's purpose is giving you reasons to leave a relationship without feeling guilty. It is not. This book is a quality test for your relationship. The result can be both "pass" or "fail". The only reason why there are more reviews written by people who left their relationship, is simply because those people are the ones who seek advice from this kind of books. People who are happy inside their relationship don't read these books, hence the disparity. If you are not strong or smart enough to seize control of your own happiness, forget about this book and try to read any of those rubbish-books that try to fix relationships at all costs, and will never acknowledge that sometimes things simply don't work because they can't work. Not only does this book help you discover whether your relationship works or not, but it also explains to you WHY it can't work, reason for which it is so valuable and worth reading.

I actually picked this book up after a relationship had already ended. It was one of those relationships with immense emotional highs and then huge emotional lows. After I ended it, I was miserable for almost a year. I got some closure through time and talking with friends and professionals, but this book definitely helped a lot. It showed me that my ex was never going to change. I mean, I knew that when I broke up with her (she actually said, "I don't think we should do things differently" and "I didn't think I'd have to adjust my life [for our relationship]"), but this book just helped me see that some people are truly like that. I'm one of those people that thinks all issues can be solved, some deep and honest conversations can solve anything, that some compromise can go a long way, and so it drove me crazy that the relationship had failed. I exhausted myself with trying so hard to understand her and make it work. I'd never really been around somebody so stubborn and uncompromising, and so I kept thinking I needed to try harder to see her side, that I was the one being too demanding (i.e., we would go weeks at a time without seeing each other or really talking and I wanted her to make more of an effort into us seeing each other -- we were dating for a few months by this point and lived 5 minutes away from each other). She convinced me that I was crazy, when really, I had needs and she consistently showed me and told me that my needs almost always ranked lower than her wants. It reminded me of arguing with Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann. If you tell someone, "Hey, this is bothering me. Can we work on it?" And they say, "It doesn't really bother me, though. Let me tell you my feelings on it. There, don't you feel better now?", then it's not all that healthy (at least for me -- and that's key, since I'm one half the relationship). If someone tells you, hey, this thing you do makes me feel bad, if you truly like or love them, then you accommodate them (sure, tell your side of the story if you want, but there must also be some sort of significant, proactive compromise on your part). And so, this book helped me see that there truly are people that no matter how much you try to change yourself, they will not even meet you halfway. I'm sure there is someone much more compatible for her. And I know without a doubt, there is someone far better for me. For a long time, I regretted that it ended, but then I read this book, and it confirmed so many things. It made me proud to have stood up for my own needs, to have set my own boundaries and enforced them. Now, I'm thankful that she is gone and out of my life. I am much happier and healthier with her as my past instead of my present or future. This book is not a silver bullet. It's just a good way to think through certain issues and get some clarity. One final thing, I actually read this book during another relationship and it didn't clarify things as much as I had hoped because the relationship was much more on the Too Good to leave side than the Too Bad to Stay side. So, I think it may actually be more helpful at clarifying when a relationship is bad, than when it is good. Really, I do agree to some extent with people that think its slanted with a break-up bias. I mean, one of the first questions is : was the relationship all that good when it was at its best? For one, memories are notoriously unreliable. Secondly, what does good mean, exactly? Just the opposite of bad? Or transcendent? Or comfortable? So really, I think the book's good for helping you get out of a bad relationship that you don't have the courage or strength to end, but not so good at telling you what to do about an okay relationship. Hence, the four stars.

This book takes you on the journey to explore relationship with your partner by giving you 36 questions to answer. The key message is telling us whether majority people felt happy/unhappy after staying or leaving considering the answers to every one of given questions. If reader honestly answers all of these, he/she will have a much better awareness of complexities of relationship with his/her partner. Author has a wide experience in couple counseling and gives us a lot of real life examples of her friends or patients, and also adds her personal insights. This adds to the credibility of whole book. Material is written mostly in informative rather than in imperative style, there is an accent throughout whole book to give reader a good understanding of his situation. This is actually very good for people who usually do not have strong faith in rigorous directions given from some authority (I belong to them, too), but who like to understand the facts before taking some action. At the end of the book there is a final question which is intended to give a definitive answer whether to stay or leave. But it is not as easy as you only answering this question and having the verdict - that's because this question operates with all the previous ones, and also because at this point of the book probably a lot of readers will have made their decision already. One warning at the end - I personally think that people who have new relationships should be more cautious to the given conclusions in this book, as there may be higher possibility that they did not fully understand complexities of all the questions, or even they entirely didn't know what to answer in some cases. If this is the case, I suggest giving it some time and maybe read some other books covering the partnership topic. I believe that with enough awareness and knowledge, the solution will finally come at the right time and form. In any case, I highly recommend reading this book. Here are few of my favorite quotes: "It's never just a person you wanted to be with. You wanted that person combined with the lifestyle you'd have (or thought you'd have) with that person." "Our partners don't have to be rich and famous and successful for us to love them and have a good relationship with them. It's only who our partners are to us that matters." "In some special way the possibility of fun is more important in the long run than holding on to that last degree of closeness. People who were close to each other but who'd lost the possibility of having fun together were a lot more unhappy and a lot more content to end their relationship than people who wished they were closer to each other but still felt the possibility of fun was alive in their relationship."

I beat myself up for years agonizing over wanting to leave my marriage of over 25 years, endlessly weighing pros and cons. During the last five years I repeatedly left for small pockets of time only to return for all the pros I thought I couldn't live without or from the overwhelming sense of responsibility. Now, on the other side of our divorce and having broken off a new relationship with a boyfriend of over a year and a half this book has clarified for me, not only that I can feel confident in the decisions I made to leave these, but that I am not somehow unlovable or damaged goods, a crazy, substandard as my ex-husband successfully convinced me for a time, I'm just a person with "flaws" and beautiful traits too. It was my flaws and sense of overwhelming responsibility that has me trying to either accept bad treatment or endlessly find ways to convince my partner to have empathy they were uncapable or unwilling to possess. This book from an expert who's seen and heard it all cuts through those long pro/cons and gets to the heart of how others made the "right" decision of staying or leaving in every type of relationship imaginable. It's quick criteria lays out questions that diagnose the relationship as too good to leave or too bad to stay. In the spirit of a medical diagnosis for a physical illness, there is the comfort of knowing others who chose to stay or leave with that identical criteria in place were happy or "healed" when they did so. In my case, the relationship was diagnosed as terminally Ill, but the criteria may point to a manageable turnaround for others. Though the book happens to confirm what I suspected all along. I had been second guessing myself before, during, and after these decisions and if I had this book before I could have eliminated huge amounts of agony for myself and save all that energy for anything else. I'm so relieved by what I read. As if avoiding suicide weren't good enough reason in it's own right to leave any relationship- this book shows me I was truly beating a dead horse when I tried to stay. Good parts of the relationship and all. When something is too bad to live with; it's never going to become something else. That's all that matters. This should be part of mandatory reading provided to us upon birth; as part of our living life operation manual. Thank you so much for writing this!

This book was good. It covers many topics with a question and explanation of positive and negative things in a relationship. I feel it gave me a lot of insight on what to do. My situation is a little different but this book still gave me direction and IF what I need is able to happen I'll definitely stay. If not, I'll leave. It's about not making a quick decision and really figuring out what you can and can't deal with. This book will definitely help you figure that out.

I'll start by saying that I generally liked this book. I think its points are valid and there are some excellent guidelines to help you critically think about the core of your relationship. However, to align with my personal beliefs, I wish the book was more geared towards engaged or unmarried couples. To explain further, I am a 28 year old female who has been in a 3 year relationship that was great the first year, tolerable the second year and horrible the third. Neither of us are bad people, it's just a bad relationship. I am making my exit and thankful that we are not married. I consider marriage to be a vow before God, and I want to take that extremely seriously - a "divorce-is-no-option" kind of thing. If I was married to this man, the book would have helped me stay. Because I am not, I think the book justifies my decision to leave. So, in a way, I agree with many of the people who gave this a book poor review because they believe it points people toward the door. Sure, if the person wants to be pointed to the door, they will use the book to help them create the pathway. Again, in my situation, about half my answers point towards leaving and half point towards staying. So what am I to do? Well, if I were married, children, etc., I would do everything in my power to help this relationship survive. But, we're not, and I am blessed to have a lot of great opportunities for me in the future either on my own or with someone new. I'm just not happy in this relationship, and this book has helped aid my decision to leave. I have a positive outlook on life, and believe that I can make a positive out of anything. In sum, this is a great book if you are not married. It may even be a great book if you are married, because it might make you realize, "hey, there's a lot of good stuff here," but my sincere hope is that people don't use this book to leave a perfectly saveable marriage and contribute to the broken-promise, self-centered society that we currently live in (barring physical and emotional abuse - that would be a broken promise by your spouse and you SHOULD leave that situation). Lastly, I'll say that I hope this doesn't come off as judgmental. Everyone's situation is different, and I'm certainly not saying that if you have ended a marriage, there is something wrong with that. It's just a personal opinion, and it might help some people who feel the same way. Especially us never-been-married people who have no idea how hard marriage is!

I am now going through a divorce from a husband of 4 years and I picked up this book before we filed. I have to say, I found very good information and essentially confirmation of things that were great in our relationship (and still are) and those that were truly bad... bad enough to get a divorce. The best part about the book is that it is not a boring narrative of stories from her marriage counseling experiences. Of course, there are stories which serve as an example, but mostly she TALKS to you, the reader. The author does not assume the reader is female or male (although of course mostly women read this "stuff"), she doesn't assume one is married, bisexual or homosexual, etc. Of course, predominantly the examples are from married straight couples who've been married for a while, although she does have some examples of long term serious relationships. The book approaches the reader by asking questions and focusing on one's FEELINGs, not just logical actions or what one SHOULD or COULD have done or should or can do. The author asks the reader to think about one's own situation and analyze. She then says whether people who have made the decision to stay in the relationship or leave were happy (or not). What's great is that she does not ask to write a list of pros and cons because let's face is who says that 10 cons vs 1 awesome pro mean that one should leave a relationship? She focuses on individual situations and explains personality quirks, sexual problems, etc. What I found slightly lacking in the book are situations where children are involved. I have a child and she barely touches on that issue, although does give a comprehensive list of books that can help address my questions. Overall, the book is wonderful, helped me achieve exactly what I needed, which was to establish that getting a divorce was in fact what I need based on my circumstances. I have recommended this book to a friend and she found on the contrary that based on advice of the author she would be happy if she stayed and she is!

This book helped me through some difficult decisions. Thanks.

Real life situations are always more complicated and nuanced, but still, this book offers useful info that can definitely help a bit when deciding whether to stay or leave a relationship.

So far the book is good I would say get it if you want to know more about what may be going on in your relationship

Great book that puts all issues in perspective. It will probably solve all your doubts regarding a flaky relationship. *****

I very rarely write book reviews and I have in my twenty years as a psychologist and couples counsellor read many many books. This book by Mira Kirshenbaum is eloquently written and full of useful and thoughtfully provoking ideas on how to identify whether you are in a relationship that is worth fighting for or running for your life. So great questions and guidelines. A very useful book for anyone caught up in "relationship ambiguity". Highly recommend.