for noble and very understandable reasons we've come to associate maturity and kindness with a capacity not to give up on people our heroes and heroines keep faith with those they love they don't throw in the towel when trouble rears its head they put up with the hardships and friction running away is this loyalty many things are dispensable people shouldn't be but this broad and generous truth can be in danger of missing out on an important caveat that health and maturity may also require at points a subtle capacity to give up on one or two people
not always and indefinitely to keep giving them the benefit of the doubt not invariably to forgive them one more time not relentlessly to imagine the nice things they might really really have meant beneath the thoughtless and unkind things they actually did and said we might need occasionally to despair of someone as the price to pay for keeping faith with ourselves it's in the lives of children that we see this inability to give up on someone take on its starkest and most regrettable forms by their nature and circumstance children can't give up on those entrusted with
looking after them if and when the latter disappointing or cruel children present us with troubling examples of the impulse to keep going at any cost with a person who offers us love even when that love is blended with the darkest or most unhealthy elements even when beset by emotional neglect coldness unreliability meanness brusqueness broken promises to improve and worse children will think some of the following maybe they will change the child places infinite faith in the capacity of the loved one to evolve in a desired direction whatever the lack of outward evidence the child imagines
the caregiver coming to important realizations rethinking their position and seeing the light by a form of magical thinking the child clings to the idea of the adult being on the cusp of transforming themselves into the person they so badly need them to be maybe the outward behavior is bad but inside they're good heaven knows the outward stuff may not be pretty there might be shouting stonewalling outright beastliness but the child holds on to the notion that where it counts the adult is good the fundamental truth about them must be sound the center of them is
sweet touching warm and decent the child may be the butt of the adults most vicious moods that they are through it all always also their most devoted and fervent defenders maybe the problem is that I am bad the difficulties can't be disputed but their origins are up for grabs and here the child shows a tragically in intense degree of imagination yes there is badness around but that must be because they the child are ultimately somehow to blame if only they could be different the adult wouldn't be so tricky there is one thought that must be
warded off above all others that the adult might just be a mean and self-serving mediocrity that is simply not possible better to be a monster or a wretch oneself than to have ended up in the hands of a parent unworthy of respect no one and nothing else could be better children have no options they can't run away begin again or say they've had enough the world isn't broad the best of childhoods is an open prison therefore children don't even picture themselves in other circumstances what is has to be those who have the most to complain
about often don't even raise their voice frightening Lee each of these positions has its adult equivalent in certain unfulfilling relationships we may have as much of a skill as the most unfortunate child probably the child we once were at the art of justifying why we're here why we're to blame why they're innocent and why we cannot move it is we in particular those remorselessly skilled not giving up who need to hear a curious sounding lesson in being sometimes a little less loyal we need to hear that surprisingly some people just don't change that their characters
have been bolted shut through trauma and there's no chance that they will ever whatever they may say and however intensely they promise display any evolution we need to hear that surprisingly some people aren't entirely good and we aren't necessarily the problem we need to learn to blame and get annoyed with someone other than ourselves we need to do something very strange walk away this is no sign of cowardice or weakness of character it's a sign that we have finally learnt to love ourselves and so place our needs where these should always have been at the
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