Hello, you're here for a little quickie with me. Thanks for joining me. If you haven't

listened to our episode with Mark Groves, I would recommend that you listen to that first before you hop in on this

quickie with me simply because I think I just have so many thoughts after talking to

him much of what he said really resonated with me because it's what I've been trying to process for so long, especially in the realm of relationships and the complexities of staying in relationships, of knowing when to go and when to stay,

when to try harder, and when to know that you tried enough.

I grapple with this quite a bit because conventional wisdom says you should

fight for your relationship if you truly love someone should try everything

you can but this is why relationships are so complex just because you love

someone and have a history with someone. I also believe that sometimes relationships run its course and then it gets to this tipping point of when it starts being toxic or detrimental or when you get to a point where Mark Grove says when you start losing yourself.

So one thought that I was really gravitated towards was this idea of taking an intentional

break in a relationship.

And he and his wife, Kylie,

they were together for five years,

living together, going through the motions of a relationship,

but he constantly felt like she was turned away from him. Those were his words. Like I felt turned towards her and she always felt like her shoulders were turned away from me and they ultimately decided to break up. Now the plot

twist is they did get back together and now they're married with a kid but it's a

brand new relationship and in my mind I feel like that is how sometimes the story goes

but we don't talk about it we don't normalize this idea of what I'm going to call a relationship

sabbatical. And I've had a lot of friends and many of them have been on Datable who've talked

about their successful relationships,

their healthy marriages,

but the part they tend to skip

...