What It Costs Us to Stay

This piece dropped in a little while ago, quietly—but it’s lingered. 

It’s about the moments we override our knowing. 
That subtle nudge that something’s not quite right… but we keep going. 
We say yes. We move in together. 
We split the cost of furnishing a home. 
And suddenly, it just feels harder to leave. 

From the outside, it looks like we’ve built something solid. 
Steady. Dependable. 
The kind of relationship we’re taught to want—stable, respectable, good on paper. 
There’s nothing wrong, exactly. 
But still, something feels off. 
Like a quiet emptiness that won’t go away, nor can we explain. 

We tell ourselves we should be grateful. 
We list all the reasons we are. 
But beneath it, there’s a dull ache. 
A sense of absence we can’t quite name. 
We’ve arrived at the life we thought would make us happy—the one everyone calls the dream— 
but now we’re here, it feels hollow. 
Lonely. 
Like something essential is missing. 

Because what we’ve built isn’t wrong— 
it’s just not ours. 
Not in the way our soul longs for. 

It follows a familiar script: 
partnership as performance, 
longevity as success, 
compromise as love. 

And we’ve done it well. 
We’ve tried to make it enough. 
But “should” has never reached the part of us that still aches. 

We’re standing in the middle— 
one hand holding the safety of what we know, 
the other quietly reaching for something we can’t yet name. 
Something that feels more like truth. 

We say we’re staying for love, 
but often, we’re really staying because leaving feels disruptive. 
Because we don’t want to disappoint anyone. 
Because we’re scared of the unknown. 

But that disruption? That discomfort? 
It’s temporary. 

The cost of abandoning ourselves— 
that lasts much longer. 

This journal entry is about that cost. 
About the quiet ways we disappear inside something that no longer feeds us. 
And how it’s never too late to choose ourselves. 

Even if it breaks something. 
Even if it means saying no— 
for the sake of finally making space for our yes. 

There are so many reasons we stay. 

Because we’ve invested years. 
Because we love them. 
Because we’re pushing 30—or 40—and it feels too late to start over. 
Because we’re afraid of what life looks like on our own. 
Because it’s easier to be uncomfortable in what we know 
than to risk the unknown discomfort of change. 
Because part of us still hopes they’ll finally see us, 
meet us, hold us in the way we long to be held. 

And before we know it, it’s not just a microwave. 
It’s a dog. 
A shared lease. 
A pregnancy. 
A mortgage. 
A child. 

The more we build, the harder it becomes to untangle. 
So we tell ourselves, I’ll just stay. 

We tell ourselves that it’s not that bad. 
We make peace with the ache. 
We lower the bar on our desires just enough 
so we can call this “enough.” 

But slowly—so quietly we barely notice— 
it begins to cost us. 

It costs us our aliveness. 
We stop reaching for the things that once made us feel vibrant 
and sensual 
and creative. 
We go numb to the hunger for real intimacy, 
because wanting it when it’s not available hurts too much. 

It costs us our truth. 
We filter our needs. 
We bite our tongues. 
We become masters at pretending we’re okay, 
just to keep the peace. 

It costs us our wildness. 
The bold, brilliant, dreaming part of us that sees more for our life— 
who wants to run barefoot through possibility, 
to create, 
to expand, 
to speak freely, 
to be met in the fullness of who she is— 
she begins to quiet. 

We say we’re staying for love, 
but often what we’re really doing is staying for safety. 
For familiarity. 
For the comfort of not having to start over. 
For the illusion of belonging, 
even when we feel alone in the room. 

And we don’t talk about how lonely it is— 
to be in a relationship 
and still feel unseen. 
Still feel untouched in the ways that matter most. 
To ache for soul-deep connection 
and keep finding ourselves speaking a language the other doesn’t understand. 

So we stop asking. 
We fold parts of ourselves away. 
We become smaller, 
safer, 
more digestible. 
And somehow, 
we start to disappear. 

This is the cost. 
Not all at once. 
But slowly, in layers. 
And sometimes, by the time we realise what we’ve traded, 
we don’t even remember what it felt like to be fully expressed. 

But underneath the quiet resignation, 
something in us always knows. 

We know when we’re starving and calling it enough. 
We know when the relationship is surviving on compromise 
but not thriving in truth. 
We know when we’ve made ourselves too easy to love 
by giving up the parts of us that needed to be chosen first. 

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do 
is admit that staying is no longer sacred. 
That the cost has become too high. 

And that we deserve to come back to ourselves— 
even if it means breaking our own heart to do it. 

Because when we walk away, 
we begin walking toward ourselves. 

I want to close this piece a little differently. 

Recently I’ve been watching Tiny Beautiful Things on Disney+, the adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s beloved book. In episode 7, the main character Clare—an advice columnist known as Sugar—reads a letter aloud in voiceover and it stayed with me. 

It felt like it was written for this very moment. For the ache. For the tension. For the knowing we try so hard to unhear. 

So I’ll leave you with her words: 

Dear women,  
I'm writing to all of you out there who are in the throes of trying to answer these impossible questions.  

When should I go?  
When do I leave,  
and how do I stay?  

Right before my junior year of college, I married a good man who I both loved and should not have married.  

Because the day I married him, there was a small, clear voice inside me that said Go,  
that said Go, even though you love him,  
Go, even though he is kind and faithful and good to you.  

Go even though there is nowhere to go.  
Go even though you don't know exactly why you can't stay.  

And once I heard that voice, I couldn't unhear it, so instead, I tried not to listen.  

But women, you have to listen.  

There are so many reasons we should stay, but there is really only one reason to go.  

Go, because you want to  
go, because, wanting to leave is enough.  

Yours,  
Sugar. 

With love,
Rhian xx

This piece is part of a series. Check out the other posts in the series here.