...Who am I to disagree?"

I told a friend today that I feel like I am on an emotional roller coaster and I can’t get off. I want to, but I feel stuck.

It seems like such an easy thing to say. If you don’t like how a relationship is going, walk away. I understand now that is pretty useless piece of advice. I don’t think it’s wrong, but walking away is rarely simple.

In economic terms, one must consider the sunk cost. I don't believe that I am terribly different from most people; when I have invested myself in a relationship, I don't want to feel like that effort is wasted. I think it's also difficult when I'm in the midst of a relationship to realize that it is costing me more that it is giving me.

I have been married three times. I adored my second husband. (This isn't a slam against my first husband, he isn't relevant to this particular topic.) The first three years of our relationship felt like everything a good partnership should be. I felt like we connected on an emotional level. It was that connection that kept me with him for another four years. I could point to the moment when I should have left, but that's pure hindsight. In the moment, the only time I could have left was when I did.

For many years, I blamed the problems in our marriage on the emotional connections we had and how they were broken. I held my heart in reserve, rarely trusting anyone with true emotion. I love my third husband, but it took years for us to get to that point. I didn't trust my heart and so my current husband had to prove a lot of things. I really am very fortunate that he was so understanding and patient.

It has taken me years to relearn how to forge emotional connections with people. I feel like I relate on a deeper level to the people in my life. What my husband proved to me was that I could trust other people. For the most part, this has been a good thing.

Over the past weekend, I learned that trust needs boundaries. Emotional connections are a fine thing until they cross boundaries or make me feel powerless. That has been the challenge for the past few days. I don't really have the tools to weigh the difference between sunk cost that's a hopeless cause against one that just needs a little more emotional currency.

I find this frustrating. I just want a way to calculate how much emotion for how long before I give up? If Google could do that for me, I'd appreciate it. (The link isn't a google tool, but hey, it's something. Surfer beware.)