Why We Stay in What Hurts Us

There’s a difficult truth I keep coming up against in my own healing: it’s often easier to stay in what’s familiar, even if it’s hurting us, than to step into the unknown, even when it holds the potential for something better.

Because, as uncomfortable as it is to admit, familiar discomfort often feels safer than unfamiliar peace.

And I think that explains more of our lives than we’d like to believe.

During my senior year of college, I started dating my last boyfriend.

Almost immediately, I noticed red flags in what he said, in how I reacted, and in how we treated each other. But I didn’t leave.

It was still COVID; I was finishing college; A baseball player wanted to date me; I felt lucky to be wanted; I felt lucky to be in something that, from the outside, looked like stability.

So I overlooked what didn’t feel right for a long time.

Fast forward a year, I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, working in New York City, and regularly feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, and out of place.

And I didn’t fully understand why.

But the answer was simple: I had stayed in a relationship that quietly started shaping my entire life. I let it become the reason I moved somewhere I never actually wanted to live, because going along with what my boyfriend wanted felt easier than leaving and facing the unknown on my own.

And the unknown, even when it holds the potential for something better, asks something terrifying of us:

Trust.

Trust that there could be another way to live, to survive letting go of who we’ve been, and that on the other side of this pattern, our life might actually be softer, fuller, freer.

And for many people, that kind of trust feels far more threatening than just staying where they are.

The mind would rather predict pain than risk uncertainty.

This is the part that’s hard to explain to yourself when you’re in it.

For three and a half years, I argued, yelled, and fought with someone I loved. Not because I didn’t care, but because I didn’t yet understand that what I was feeling wasn’t normal.

Relationships are not supposed to feel like they are ripping you apart from the inside. They’re not supposed to make every word feel wrong, every decision feel like a mistake, or leave you consistently feeling worse about yourself.

You could say I was young; that I didn’t know what I was doing.

But the truth is, I did know.

I just wasn’t willing to listen.

We are often more loyal to what is familiar than to what is true.

In early 2024, I had done enough work on myself, breaking thought patterns, recognizing my self-worth, and finally accepting that the way I felt in my relationship was not something I was willing to keep living with.

But let me be clear: even understanding that at the deepest level did not make leaving easy.

Letting go of something familiar — no matter what it is, no matter how much it is hurting you — will almost always be difficult.

Despite how difficult this was for me at the time, two years later, I can say with certainty that this was one of the best decisions I have ever made for myself.

Your comfort in familiarity is not a flaw, and you are not alone in feeling afraid of the unknown.

The most important work is not forcing yourself to be unafraid. It is learning to listen more closely to your inner truth, even when it leads you somewhere unfamiliar.