Weighing it: your leaning today

You cannot add up a relationship. Anyone who has tried the two-column list of pros and cons knows how it goes: the columns come out roughly even, or they come out lopsided and you do not believe them. This module takes a different approach. It asks you to rate eight factors one at a time, shows you the balance, and then asks you to pay attention not to the total but to which ones you found hardest to answer.

Why you cannot calculate this

A decision like this is not a sum because the factors are not the same kind of thing. Your safety is not on the same scale as your mortgage. What the children see is not comparable to whether you still fancy each other. Pretending they can be scored and totalled gives you false precision, and false precision is worse than none, because it feels like an answer.

What you can do is look at each factor on its own, be honest about which way it pulls, and then stand back and see the shape. The shape is a reading, not a result. It tells you where you lean today. It does not tell you what to do.

The eight factors

Each is below, with what it is getting at. Rate how much it pulls you, from "pulls me to go" to "pulls me to stay". Either is a fine answer if it is true. If you want to skip one, skip it.

How I feel when we're together on an ordinary evening. Not the best night or the worst. A Tuesday. Is it ease, or is it work? This is the relationship as it actually is most of the time.

How I feel when I imagine having left. Not the leaving itself, which is frightening for almost everyone, but a year on. Relief, grief, both? People are often surprised by how clearly they know this.

What my closest friend would say if they saw a week of this. Not what they have said, which is filtered through what you have told them. What they would say if they saw everything. This factor is a way of borrowing eyes that are not tired.

What the children see and learn. If there are children. Not whether they are happy, which children can seem to be in almost any home, but what they are learning about how two adults treat each other. Skip if it does not apply.

Whether I still want this relationship, not just the life around it. The house, the shared friends, the family occasions, the not-being-alone: those are the life around it. This asks about the person.

Whether real change has happened, or been promised. If you have done the Change modules you will have an answer that is based on evidence rather than hope. Promised change pulls much less than change that has held.

What it would cost me to leave. Money, home, status, faith community, the children's school, your standing with family. These are real and they belong on the scale. Nobody should pretend they do not.

What it is costing me to stay. Health, friends, your sense of who you are, your work, your sleep. This is the factor people most often leave out, because it has been paid slowly and has started to feel like the weather.

Now notice two things

First, the bar. Take it in and then put it down. It is a picture of your answers today, nothing more.

Second, and more useful: which factors did you hesitate over? Which did you go back and change? Which did you want to skip? Those are the ones carrying something you have not looked at yet. Write them down. They are where the next module starts.

Many people find the hardest two are "what it is costing me to stay" and "what my friend would say". That is not a coincidence. Both ask you to see from outside, and that is the view the relationship has made hard to reach.

A leaning is not a promise

You may have come out leaning one way and felt a jolt. Leaning towards going can feel like a betrayal. Leaning towards staying can feel like a failure of nerve. Neither feeling is a reason to distrust the reading.

A leaning is where you are standing today. You can stand there for a while. You can come back next month, rate again, and see if it has moved. A reading that is the same in three months means something. A reading that swings with every good or bad week means something too: it tells you the relationship is running your judgement, which is itself a factor.

You do not owe anyone a decision because you have done an exercise. Including yourself.

What the Decision score on your profile does

If you have a profile, the Decision lens shows a leaning drawn from your answers to the Decision questions, which you will be asked again below. It is worth knowing what it does and does not do.

It is capped by Safety and Control. If your Safety lens shows risk, or your Pattern lens shows control as the leading pattern, the Decision lens will not show a strong leaning to stay however you answer, because in those circumstances a leaning to stay is not information about the relationship so much as information about what the relationship has done to your room to think. The cap is there to say: look at this first.

It is lifted by sustained change. If your Change lens shows change that has held for months and passed the tests in Real change or performed change?, the Decision lens gives that more weight than promised or early change. Hope is not evidence. Held change is.

It is not a recommendation. It never says stay and never says go, only lays out what you have told us so you can see it.

What this is not

This is not a test you can pass or fail, and it is not a decision. People who do this exercise and lean one way sometimes do the other, for reasons that are good. The exercise does one job: it stops the question living entirely in your head, where it goes round, and puts it in front of you, where it can be looked at.

If you are reading this and realising you have been weighing for years, that is a reading too. What's really holding you? is about why.

Update your profile

Answer these for today. Not for the week you hope is coming.

This exercise updates your profile (Decision). You can change your answers later.

Where to go next

• What's really holding you?: the blockers, named one by one, each with a UK route through it. Members.
• What this has cost you: if the "cost of staying" factor was the one you did not want to rate.
• Staying safer while you decide: because deciding takes time, and you can make that time safer.