When to step back from a difficult relationship : NPR

An illustration shows a person on the left drawing a line on the ground around themselves with an oversized, neon yellow highlighter. A person stands to the right of the frame watching them draw a boundary around themselves.

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You have a strained relationship with your father, but he recently developed health issues and needs someone to care for him. You don’t feel emotionally fulfilled in your marriage, but you’ve been with your partner for 10 years. You’ve made a new friend who’s nice most of the time, but is mean when she’s angry.

Should you step back from these relationships or stick them out?

These are the kinds of dilemmas that therapist KC Davis tackles in her book published earlier this year, Who Deserves Your Love: How to Create Boundaries to Start, Strengthen or End Any Relationship. It offers practical advice on how to move forward when relationships with family members, romantic partners, or friends become difficult.

The book features a flowchart that Davis calls “The Relationship Decision Tree.” It consists of questions that Davis asks clients when their loved ones are behaving in a way that bothers them. It helps them “make decisions about whether to lean into this relationship or disengage,” she says.

Davis, author of the best-selling book How to Keep House While Drowning, talks through a few questions adapted from her framework.