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He wrote down what was unacceptable
The takebacks
He had been dating her for a long time and liked her, but he didn't see a future. His ideal was staying friends, and that wasn't what she wanted. Each attempt ended with her upset and him saying he took it back, because he didn't want to make her sad for even an instant.
Three outcomes
So he sat down and asked what he actually wanted. His ideal was to break up and stay friends. An acceptable outcome was to break up and miss each other for a while. The unacceptable outcome was staying with someone he didn't want to be with and eventually marrying her because he was too scared to end it.
Years later
He wrote all three down, and it gave him the conviction to go through with it, even though hurting someone he cared about that much was very hard. Years later they are friends. He doesn't think he could have done it without having written down what was acceptable and what wasn't.
Why do people stay in relationships they doubt?
Psychologist Caryl Rusbult's investment model, introduced in 1980, predicts commitment from three things: satisfaction, the quality of alternatives, and the size of what a person has already invested. Time, shared friends, and emotional effort all count as investments. A person can stay committed even with low satisfaction when those investments are large. The model has been tested in studies of friendships, workplaces, and romantic relationships.
Why does writing a decision down help?
Benjamin Franklin described a version of this in a 1772 letter to the scientist Joseph Priestley. He advised dividing a sheet of paper into two columns, listing reasons for and against, and crossing out items of equal weight. Putting the considerations on paper makes them visible at once instead of cycling through memory. His letter is one of the earliest well-known accounts of a written pros and cons list.
Why are on-again, off-again breakups so common?
Communication researcher René Dailey and colleagues have studied relationships that break up and later renew. They found the pattern is common among young adults. Such relationships tend to involve more uncertainty about the partner and the future than stable ones. Each reconciliation resets that uncertainty without settling it.
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