How do you know when it’s time to leave your relationship? Here are 10 flashing neon signs.

Breaking up is hard to do. Even a toxic relationship can seem better than the great unknown, and the thought of leaving can send fears swirling through your mind about being unable to support yourself, regretting your decision someday or never falling in love again. But nobody is going to take control of your happiness – you have to do it yourself. And your romantic relationship is one of the biggest factors that can make or break your happiness, either cushioning you with love, respect and support or smothering you with insecurities, control issues and simple incompatibility. So if these 10 signs of a failing relationship sound familiar, it might be time to push past those fears and start fresh.

Everything your partner does is irritating to you.

The way he slumps on the couch in front of the television. Her compulsive lip-biting. His irrational insistence, which once seemed cute, on organizing the contents of the refrigerator by size. The way she drives, or sighs, or breathes.  Once you looked upon this person with love, or at least affection. Now, absolutely everything he or she does is annoying. Maybe you’re just going through some kind of passing phase in which you’re facing the reality of the person you’ve chosen to be with, rather than the romantic ideal you started with. Or maybe these are all signs that it’s time to move on.

You can’t have a serious discussion without getting angry.

Honest communication is the key to a healthy relationship. So when you’ve got a problem, you want to talk it out. But somehow, what should be a simple discussion about divvying up household chores or protecting your quality time as a couple turns into a knock-down, drag-out fight complete with yelling, foot-stomping and door-slamming. Just thinking about the grievances you have with your partner gets you all worked up, and you don’t seem to accomplish anything by discussing them.  Communication issues are not always a sign of a doomed relationship – there are all kinds of complicated factors involved. But if couples’ therapy doesn’t work out, you might be better off calling it quits.

You’re stuck in an unsatisfying cycle.

Perhaps you know exactly what the problems are in your relationship, and you are able to have a calm, productive discussion with your partner about them, with mutual agreement for positive change. That’s great. But let’s just say that in the grind of daily life, one or both of you tends to forget all about the compromises that you made, and before long everything is back to the way it was. With a lot of dedication, relationship issues like the balance of power and responsibilities, mutual respect and autonomy can certainly be improved. The work to keep a relationship satisfying for both parties never ends. But we are who we are, and we all have our limits to how much we’re willing or able to change. Consider the fact that this might be a matter of basic incompatibility.

You don’t respect him/her anymore.

You talk over him when he’s speaking. You barely listen to what she has to say. You make plans for both of you, without consulting him first. Basically, you’re really inconsiderate of your partner – or your partner is inconsiderate of you. Sometimes, this might just reflect years of ingrained habits and familiarity. But it can also be a sign that you just don’t respect your partner’s beliefs, opinions and preferences. So, why are you with him again? Having someone around to talk to and share a household with isn’t enough. Don’t stay with someone who doesn’t respect you or vice versa. You both deserve better.

You find yourself tempted by others.

It’s totally natural to check other people out every once in a while, and even to develop harmless little crushes that you never intend to act upon. But you’re crossing a line as soon as you start actually thinking about stepping out on your partner. If you find yourself sorely tempted to hook up with somebody else or just developing strong feelings for another person, perhaps your ties to your current significant other aren’t as strong as they should be. And if you log onto a dating website just to “see what’s out there,” you’ve already packed your bags in spirit.

You’re a different person when you’re with your partner.

Okay – we’re all different when we’re with our partners than we are with friends, colleagues or strangers. But that should be a positive, not a negative. Your partner should be the person you feel most comfortable around, knowing that you can let it all hang out and be your real self (while still being respectful and considerate, of course. Being yourself isn’t a license to be a jerk.) But if you find yourself turning into a nag, clamming up, shrinking or otherwise changing in a way that you’re not comfortable with when you’re alone together, that’s not a good sign. It says that your partner has some kind of power over you, or that you have suppressed negative feelings about him/her that you need to deal with. This may indicate that you have some personal issues you need to work on, like confidence and independence, or it may mean that you’re not with the right person.

You’re still waiting for him/her to change.

What is it with so many women falling for men they perceive as damaged, but fixable? As Jezebel’s Hugo Schwyzer put it, “Reality check: your love does not necessarily conquer all.” You’re head over heels for a man (or woman) who has all manner of character flaws, but you believe that this poor wounded soldier just needs some TLC and he or she will magically transform into the partner of your dreams. Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to happen. You shouldn’t wait around for someone to change, especially if you’re the one who wants those changes to occur. One day, that person might just have an epiphany and decide to turn his or her life around, but it’s got to be their choice, not yours.

You’re being smothered.

There’s the obvious kind of smothering, in which you’re kept on a short leash, and there’s the insidious kind. The kind that slowly works its way into your hopes and dreams when you’re not looking. Sometimes, romantic partners discourage personal growth and exploration of new possibilities because they’re afraid. After all, if you change too much, you might not want to be with them anymore. They chip away at the time you’d like to spend perfecting your craft or enriching your spirit, make you feel guilty about your dedication to your hobbies, career or other dreams, or flat out tell you you’re not good enough. Someone who really loves you shouldn’t prevent you from being the best possible you, and having the happiest and most fulfilling life you can have.

The cons of the relationship outweigh the pros.

When in doubt, write it out. List all of the positive things about your relationship that you can think of, and all of the negatives. Consider both your daily life and the big picture. You might realize that your relationship problems are just the normal ups and downs of any romantic partnership, or you might realize that you’ve been holding on for the wrong reasons. Give yourself a few days to mull over your list, making it as complete as possible, and weigh the pros against the cons. This is your life – the only one you have. We’re all afraid of making the wrong decisions and having regrets, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll find the right person eventually, or that happiness will come your way. But it’s more likely to happen if you’re pro-active in your life, rather than just sitting back and letting other people dictate how it goes.

Photo: Hillary the Mammal

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Has your cubicle got you comatose? Here are some warning signs that it’s time to launch your conscious career.

Most of us spend more time with our colleagues and bosses than our partners, kids and friends. If that’s not motivation to make sure your job is a good fit, what is? The job you choose can determine how physically and mentally healthy you are, your standard of living, your future prospects and whether you look back at your life at the brink of death and feel like you did your best. Consider these 10 signs that it’s time to quit, and you might just set yourself onto a much more fulfilling path.

Just about any task is better than doing your job.

When you’re at work, you’ll do just about anything to avoid performing the tasks that are assigned to you. You play around on Facebook, browse the internet and organize your vacation photos. In fact, you’re happy to perform menial tasks like taking out the trash and running errands for the boss – anything that will keep you away from your job for another five minutes. In other words, your work is utterly joyless for you.

You’ve got unsolvable issues with management.

There’s almost always going to be a certain amount of friction between workers and management; that’s just the way of the world. But sometimes, no matter how hard you try to diffuse it, conflicts with your higher-ups can jeopardize your career well into the future. First, make sure that it isn’t all your Facebooking, those lunchtime cocktails or any other performance or behavior issues that are causing the problem. Then, talk to your boss’ boss. If that doesn’t work, think about moving on. Sometimes, it’s just not a good fit.

Your company is on a downward spiral.

There have been layoffs left and right, and the company has been reorganized and consolidated so many times it’s hardly recognizable. Things are so tight, they’ve asked white-collar workers to start delivering packages and vacuuming their own cubicles. This ship is probably going down, and even if the company manages to hang on, your position could be eliminated at any time. Don’t be caught by surprise. Start researching new jobs right now.

Your skills aren’t valued.

You feel like you’ve got a lot to offer, and your company just isn’t using you to your full potential. Not only are you rarely challenged, but you’re marginalized. Maybe you’re not being included in important meetings, or you’ve been passed over for a promotion. If your job doesn’t let you flex, you won’t be able to build more skills and grow professionally.

You’re stuck in a dead end.

You haven’t gotten very far in your company, but the growth has stopped, and it doesn’t look like things will be getting better any time soon. There are no opportunities to move up, and no opportunities for higher pay. Unless you can come to grips with the fact that you might remain stagnant for the rest of your career, you should explore options that can take you higher.

You dread going to work.

It’s Sunday night and your stomach is a ball of lead. The absolute last thing you want to do tomorrow morning is get up and go to work. Maybe your anxiety is so bad, you have a hard time enjoying your weekends because you just can’t stop thinking about Monday morning. When you hate your job this much, you’re not doing yourself or your employers any favors by staying on.

You’re simply bored.

Maybe work is not so bad, but you can’t muster much enthusiasm about it. You definitely don’t feel passionate about what you do – it’s just work. This is reality for a lot of people, and in a poor economy, it’s probably not enough reason on its own to quit your job. But take this opportunity to imagine what kind of job would make you truly happy. What would you rather be doing right at this moment? Running a food truck, starting a dog grooming business or growing exotic orchids could certainly be a viable business. Your dream might be more achievable than you think.

You can’t pay your bills.

On the other hand, some people quit well-paying jobs with the hopes of following their dreams only to find that surviving on their new pay is practically impossible. If you truly love what you’re doing, make it work. That might mean downsizing your lifestyle so that you don’t require as much money to pay the bills. But if you’re working to exhaustion every day and still stressing about your paltry paychecks, it’s probably not worth it.

It’s affecting your health.

Speaking of stress, it can really do some cruel and horrifying things to your body and your mind, putting you at increased risk for heart attacks, respiratory disorders and hormonal imbalances. It can cause tension headaches, nerve pain, irritability, joint pain, ulcers and depression. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your well-being for your job. If you lie in bed every morning wishing you could call in sick yet again, perhaps this gig is not for you.

It’s affecting your personal life.

You’d love to go out for drinks with friends, catch up with that cute guy that always flirts with you at the gym or attend your daughter’s dance recital, but you can’t. You’ve got to go to work. Some people aren’t bothered by 80-hour work weeks, and everybody has to decide for themselves what level of personal sacrifice they find acceptable. But being miserable because your job is keeping you from enjoying your life? Not okay.

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Photo: Rachael Voorhees, Ana Patricia Alameida, EpSos.de, whatmegsaid

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ColumnOur love and relationships columnist weighs in on winter, women, and welcoming the come-what-may.

In my late teens, I stumbled (clumsily, with the fevered passion of a young person just learning to sniff out the pheromones of the opposite sex) into a relationship with a dark-eyed boy who had the fullest lips and strongest biceps of anybody I’d ever seen. We empowered one another in our young, exploratory passions, and he left my body crawling with unabated animal urgency.

A few years down the road, came another man whose muscled legs and vast mental catalog of the world’s literary masters mesmerized me. There was overlap, the shameful but giddy awkwardness of an affair, and the new guy and I ran away with one another from Austin, Texas to San Francisco. A few more years down the road, came another one with a globe-trotting music career and emotional intelligence on par with some wizened, bearded ascetic. I was hooked and promptly moved into his apartment.

At some point, however, this lifetime of love was too much for me. I’d been lucky to have taken up with adoring and kind men. But a cloying sense of – I don’t know what – took root in me. After parting on compassionate, amicable terms with my latest long-time boyfriend, I packed a week’s worth of clothing in a small suitcase and bought a one-way ticket to Berlin.

Ten years after all this sometimes selfish, always delirious shacking up, I now come home at the end of the day to a child-sized single bed in a completely empty room occupied with nothing else but the contents of the aforementioned luggage. My habitat is quiet, my heart is crystalline in its clarity, and my mind is no longer buzzing with white noise. It’s just me, my professional ambitions, my new friends, and an abiding sense of silence.

In the past, I felt sorry for people who were single. They must be so lonely, I thought. I was, of course, wrong. What I have lately lost in constant companionship, I have gained in self-examination and access to something much bigger than my previous shelter of endless dyadic reflection. It took me months to start dating again, and I’m glad for the time I allowed myself to simply be. It’s astonishing to understand just how little I knew about men and women, love and dating.

Six months ago, when EcoSalon’s editor Sara Ost invited me to launch this weekly column, I had no idea what was in store for me as a woman, as a writer, and as a contributor to a cultural conversation about modern love. This gig was a serendipitous fluke, and in the intervening period in Europe I have found myself occupying what is, at least for me and in my own small way, a brave new world–next month, I have my final visa appointment to become a long-term resident of the E.U.

It’s something to grow up, have boys hurt your heart, and to wake up one morning with the discovery you’re really you. For the first time in my life, I’m just me, with no other identity markers than those of my own self-reliance and a completely new community of my own making. I’m grateful for my friends. I’m buoyed by my family. What’s more, I’m floored by all of you who have been generous enough to encourage – and challenge – me along the way.

Thank you for sending me letters, friending me on Facebook and, most importantly, opening up and sharing your experiences with me. The more people make contact with one another, the fewer strangers there are in the world. We can all be anchors for one another, and it’s a supreme honor and gift to share the love.

It’s nightfall here in Berlin, and already the weather is cold – with the beastly, Northernly winter already beginning to slink through the streets here. The forthcoming season will be endlessly dark, uniformly gray, and chill me in a way I’ve never known. I welcome it.

Sex By Numbers is an ongoing look into the emotional and sexual lives of the modern day woman. Follow Abigail Wick weekly here for insight and inspiration as she explores the “sex” of women and the terrain they must travel.

Image: le xav

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