the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Knowing when to walk away

“Some people change.
Others hang on ‘til they can’t anymore.”
-Black Lab

I was talking with a friend recently about relationship-oriented matters. My friend talked, almost off-hand, about having given up on looking for a long-term relationship, about being resigned to living single. I initially scoffed, thinking my friend is still at a stage of life where finding love (or whatever passes for it) is still entirely possible, and given the positive attributes my friend has, even probable. Surely it’s far too early to be giving up.

Without going into further detail, I’ll concede that perhaps I didn’t fully understand the implications of my friend calling off the active search for true love. It strikes me that many of the worthwhile people who’ve crossed my path have done so when I wasn’t even remotely expecting them. So maybe giving up the search isn’t the same as giving up altogether; maybe it’s an acknowledgment of the positive things that can happen only when we let them.

The other thought occurring to me as a result of this conversation was this: how do we know when to give up on something? Sometimes we don’t – as has often been the case in my life. But ignoring, for the moment, whether our decisions to abandon or maintain key pursuits are misguided or correct, how do we come to feel certain of those choices? And do most of us ever even feel certain?

I’ve chased many idyllic goals. I’ve even abandoned a few, whether those efforts were professional, academic, romantic or even philanthropic in nature. One of those instances happened fairly recently, and I’m still not sure exactly what triggered my decision to halt the pursuit. I can think of justifications, but I can’t say with certainty which, if any of them, was to blame for my surrender.

Was it disillusionment? Were other priorities just pushing it out of focus? Was it the sense of futility, a sense I’d never achieve my ideal? Or was it simply exhaustion? And how do different people establish these thresholds? (How do political leaders establish them, for that matter?)

I’ve noticed some people call off the search for an ideal more easily than others. Sometimes I think it weak; other times I admire them for it, recognizing a strain of wisdom in the capacity to recognize failure before it ruins them.

I should probably let this post die before I ask any more questions for which I have no answers. If you’ve got any ideas, feel free.

This is going to sound so cliche, but it’s true—I met my husband when I had decided that I was happy being single and just wanted to date. I actually had no intentions in finding a long-term relationship at the time. As it turns out, I found someone who is a great guy, and willing to go in for the long haul.

As for other goals in my life—I rely on my intuition on whether to keep pursuing a goal. If I run into too many obstacles to endure, I move on to other things. I keep an open mind, though—sometimes things that I’ve abandoned come back to gently nudge me to pursue them again, and then I take that as a sign to revisit them. It takes a lot of awareness and openness to possibilities.

I think for me it isn’t so much about knowing when to give up as it is knowing that sometimes you just can’t make something happen through sheer force of will. That sometimes it just isn’t the time, or that there are other things that you need to do first. I’m a firm believer that you ask for what you want and then you step back a bit and let the universe handle the fulfilment process.

These days I’m not actively dating, and some people would look at it as if I’ve given up because I’m not out there trying to find someone through force of will. But the universe knows that I do want to meet someone and working on it so that right now I can spend my time on other things.

I realize it might sound a little loony, but oh well.

yoko – I think the fact that an idea is true more often than not contributes to it becoming a cliche. My experience seems to have borne this one out, too.

Marisa – loony, yes, but only a little bit

The sheer force of will observation is a good one. But sometimes it’s hard to delineate between things you should sit back and wait for and things you should pursue actively. I guess I’m trying to figure out if people have a pre-existing line, or if it’s more improvisational.

I believe we are all philosophers – we live out our lives based on the notion of why we think we exist. Often this is a subconscious process.

why are “you” here? make babies? accumulate stuff? have people idolize you? be a disney princess? hear yourself talk? get laid? have a “nice” life? help your fellow man? fight injustice? some combination? If so then what takes priority?

It seems to me, those who sustain their fire within are those who live altruistically.

You seem to be a decent and principled man. I’ll bet that never changes. How it manifests may – but your goodness will always cause ripples…

I guess I’m another one of those cliches. After I gave up dating completely, my wife sort of snuck up on me. I wonder if there are some things, like true love, if you believe in such a thing, that shouldn’t be pursued? Of the driven, motivated guys I knew in high school who pursued the girls of their dreams, I can’t think of a single one who married or is still married to the object of his obsession. That is, of course, purely anecdotal, and I certainly don’t claim any special revealed knowledge when it comes to matters of the heart, as marrying my wife was just pure dumb luck on my part.

As for knowing when to walk away, it may be indicative of my own personal pathology, but most of the pursuits I have given up were things that I thought I should pursue, rather than things I wanted to pursue and I walked away when I finally figured out the distinction.

“I have given up were things that I thought I should pursue, rather than things I wanted to pursue and I walked away when I finally figured out the distinction.”

amen

Unseek and ye shall find. After the most recent in a long line of relationship disasters, I decided to swear off dating. I’ve had a mix of responses. Some consider this a bad idea. Others don’t blame me. All think I’m giving up, but they’re only half right.

I agree a lot with what Marisa said. There’s a big difference between giving up an emotionally taxing effort that just isn’t working and giving up hope.

For me, I’ve admitted that my effort in finding someone has exhausted itself. Sometimes that feels a little lonely and bleak, but I haven’t entirely given up hope. I’m more realistic now in knowing that there’s so much I want to do and accomplish that I simply wouldn’t be able to do if I committed myself to a good relationship the way it would deserve.

Kudos, Marisa. When and if the time is right, the right lady and I will feel it; and it will be magic. Until then, I’ll go wherever I feel I’m meant to be and do whatever I’m meant to do, just trusting that life is ultimately leading me to where I belong.

“Unseek and ye shall find.”

I like that. The more I think about it, the more I think finding what you want in life tends to be like one of those autostereograms, where if you look too intently, the thing you’re seeking completely escapes you.