A quick note: you may know this letter as Beyond Stability. That name was a placeholder, chosen in a hurry. This letter has always been an extension of a framework at the heart of my book: the three friends of winter: narrative, ritual, purpose. Starting with this issue, the name finally reflects that. The Winter Letters is a monthly letter for people navigating life changes whilst entering the most responsibility-filled season of their lives.
Every so often, someone sits across from me and tells me a story I've heard before, wearing different details each time. A relationship, a job, sometimes a friendship, where they're giving far more than they're getting, and staying anyway.
One case has stayed with me in particular: a woman engaged to a partner who'd stopped meeting her halfway, staying in large part because of a feeling I hear constantly in this work: they had already been together this long, so leaving would waste everything already spent.
That reasoning has a name, and it isn't really about love.
It's the same logic that keeps people holding a stock that's already lost half its value, or finishing a terrible movie because they've already sat through the first hour.
Behavioral economists call it the sunk-cost fallacy: the more we've already invested in something, the harder it becomes to walk away, even when walking away is obviously the right call.
Time, once spent, feels like it should count for something, so we keep spending more of it, trying to make the earlier spending worth it.
In relationships, this shows up as a specific, recognizable shape. You may over-function to make up for what's missing, explain away the coldness as busyness, the distance as a phase, and get better and better at earning affection that should have simply been given. The longer this goes on, the more your own effort becomes the evidence you use against yourself, the sense that you've put in this much work, so surely that means it's worth saving.
Here's what's harder to admit. Often, this isn't the first time.
People frequently find themselves choosing partners, jobs, even friendships that quietly recreate a familiar imbalance from much earlier in their life, without ever consciously deciding to.
Psychologists call this repetition compulsion, the pull toward what's familiar, even when what's familiar once hurt.
This isn't a character flaw. It's often the nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do, executed perfectly, just aimed at the wrong target.
The way out isn't willpower. It's a different question, asked at the right moment. When I work through this with people, I use five steps: REPEAT.
Recognize the pattern itself, not just this one instance of it. Has this exact feeling of over-giving and under-receiving shown up before, in a different relationship, a different job, a different friendship?
Explore where it might have started, not to assign blame, but to understand what this pattern was originally protecting you from.
Pause before the automatic response. The urge to over-function, to explain it away, to try harder, is fast and feels productive. It usually isn't.
Embrace the discomfort of not immediately fixing it. Sitting with an unresolved feeling is not the same as being stuck in it.
Act, but from the pause, not from the old reflex. Often this means asking one plain question: would someone who respected themselves the way I claim to respect myself actually do this?
That last question is the one that's done the most, in my experience, not because it's gentle, but because it isn't a feeling. It's a decision you can actually make, even while the feelings are still loud.
– Suzan