Here’s The Psychological Reason Why You Stay In Bad Relationships–And How To Fix It

You see it all the time. Someone is in a bad relationship, wants to leave, but they end up sticking with their partner for months or years beyond that “aha” moment. It’s happened to me–I wasted a year. It’s probably happened to you and people you know, too. So, why do we do this? Why do we stay in relationships that are bad for us when we know we should leave? Psychologists call it the “sunk cost fallacy,” and it’s time to stop using it as a way to hold yourself back.

What is the sunk cost fallacy?

The essential idea of the sunk cost fallacy is that you keep things around even if they don’t add to your life, just because you put effort into obtaining them. You might still have a dress in your closet that’s never fit right just because you spent money on it. (I do.) You’d feel like you wasted that money if you just got rid of the dress, so it continues to gather dust in your closet for the foreseeable future.

The “cost” part of this equation isn’t just about tangible money. The cost could also be time, and that’s where the sunk cost fallacy comes in when we talk about relationships. Here’s how Psychology Today explains it:

“Or you might find yourself in a dead-end relationship but you say, ‘I can’t give it up because I have already put in three years and I have to make it work out.'”

Robert L. Leahy Ph.D. Psychology Today

You see how much of your life you’ve spent with this person, and it will feel like a waste if you leave now. Almost as if you feel like you’re a failure if you walk away. If you break up as soon as you realize something is wrong, it’s just like giving up. At least that’s how it feels. So you stay, you try to fix what’s broken, but it doesn’t work. And you end up like all of us with a story like, “I knew it was over for a long time, but I waited a year to actually break up.”

So what do you do to stop falling for the sunk cost fallacy?

How to avoid the sunk cost fallacy and break up sooner.

One of the biggest motivating factors for falling for the sunk cost fallacy is feeling like you’re losing something if you admit that your relationship is over. A great way to combat that is to think about what you’re missing if you stay. There could be a much better relationship right around the corner, and if you continue in the one you’re in, you’ll never meet that person. You could be missing out on a self-empowering single moment or time to yourself, too. Rather than worrying about the time you’ve already put in, worry about the time you’d waste if you stay.

Here’s another way to look at it: Rather than investing in a relationship, invest in yourself. If you focus your attention on doing what makes you happy–rather than what might make the relationship continue–your goals will shift. You might just see how unhappy you are right now, and breakup sooner rather than later.

After all, it’s better to be single than in a bad relationship.