Life Kit - Frustrated by a relationship? Questions to ask yourself to move forward

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

If you feel overwhelmed or stuck in a close relationship, therapist KC Davis, author of Who Deserves Your Love, has a list of questions to help you decide whether you should continue to engage. Davis provides guidance on how to create boundaries you feel good about without cutting people out of your life.Take our survey at npr.org/lifekitsurveyFollow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [e-mail] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Mariel. I'm going to start by saying, life is messy. Relationships are messy. And try as we might, we are not always going to live in perfect harmony with the people in our lives. And there's been culturally, I think, a knee-jerk reaction that says, if they do something and you don't like it, cut them off. You don't need them. lose their number.

When someone is hurting you maliciously, intentionally, yeah, that's probably the right decision. But these situations so often exist in shades of gray. Casey Davis is a licensed professional therapist, and she gave me some examples. It could be someone going, okay, I'm married to someone who I don't feel like is emotionally available to me,

and I feel like we've been having the same conversation for 10 years, and they continue to, you know, not show up for me in ways that I think are really vital to this relationship and to my health. It could be someone that says I have a strained relationship with my father, but he has recently gotten some health problems and needs someone to take care of him. And, you know, am I obligated to do that? Should I do that? Casey is the author of a book called Who Deserves Your Love? And in it, she gives a list of questions that she as a clinician will ask clients when someone they care about,

is behaving in a way that's bothering them. And so I think that that's what this book is really about, is helping you, not necessarily giving you the answers, but giving you the right questions. Because when you ask yourself the right questions, you can start to parse out what bothers you about their behavior, whether change is possible, and what some solutions might look like.

You also get to decide, am I going to stay or go? And what would both of those choices mean? On this episode of Life Kit, we walk you through those questions. that's after the break. All right, let's get into it, Casey. Question one on the list is, why is this person's behavior objectionable to you? Tell me about this question.

So this is where we want to start, because a lot of times when we feel like something is bothering us about a person that we love, it can be bothering us for a lot of reasons. Sometimes something bothers you because it is impacting you negatively. It's causing distress. It's causing something hurtful. An example of that might be my roommate, you know, does not keep up her end of the cleaning and the dishes.

Like that actually directly impacts me negatively. All right, takeaway one. When someone is behaving in a way that you don't like, Casey says the first question to ask yourself is why is this behavior? objectionable to me. That can help you clarify whether it's hurtful or harmful or whether it's something you just don't like. Or you might find that something about their behavior bugs you, but then when you dig in deeper, it's like, okay, that's actually more of my religious upbringing, talking, or I'm more worried about what my family's going to think, but I, myself, don't really care. If you do find that their behavior is harming you, the next question is, is this person

willing to change. Is this person willing to take action to mitigate hurt or harm? If they don't seem willing and you think that they are like not willing at all, they're dismissive, then like that goes right to like, hey, you have permission to disengage from a relationship. If a person does not possess, like, the basic desire to help you not hurt so badly. And what would it mean to be willing in the example you just gave? Like, does the roommate have to start doing the dishes? So it could be that. But let's say that you talk to your roommate and you're like, hey, when you're done with

dishes, you need to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. Let's say that your roommate says, but I have ADHD. It's really difficult for me to do that. and you're going okay uh what does that mean does it mean that just because somebody has a disability that they don't have to change something does it mean that i completely ignore the disability so there's a really big difference between someone that goes well i can't do that i have ADHD and someone that goes okay i care that this impacts you i recognize that like i have ADHD and i have historically my whole life struggled with, like, doing the dishes and other, like, little

details like that, and I don't think that I'm going to get better at it overnight, but I am willing to do something to help with this. I can't promise that I'm going to wash every dish after it happens, but I can promise that at the end of the night, I'll always come in and do my dishes so that they're not sitting overnight. If you go to your friend or your partner or your mom, hey, like, when we argue and you scream at me, like, I can't handle it. Maybe they scream because of trauma. Maybe they scream because they have PTSD. Maybe they scream because, you know, that's how they were raised and they don't have good emotional control. Fine. We're not asking that they change these core issues overnight. But how are they responding? Do they seem willing to change

something? Are they willing to read a book? Are they willing to go to therapy? Are they willing to say, okay, well, what if we had a thing where we paused when things got heated? Or are you just always getting like, no, that's stupid. No, I won't do that. No, get over it. Or this isn't a big deal. Takeaway, too. If someone's behavior is hurting or harming you, find out if they're willing to change.

That doesn't always mean they'll do things exactly your way. Maybe you work out a solution that involves getting a dishwasher or using paper plates or doing the dishes before the end of the night or you doing all the dishes if they're willing to do all the cooking. Then, in some situations, a person will say they're willing, but then they don't actually make the changes. In others, the question of willingness is irrelevant because they're not able. Maybe you have a family member with schizophrenia or dementia, and they just can't engage with you and make changes in the way that you need. In those cases, you might call upon the history of the relationship. Think to yourself, well, my mom would have been willing if she didn't have dementia.

She's always treated me well. But now she's not herself, and so she lashes out. out at me. Thinking this through is going to help you as you move through the other questions. All right. The next question is, does staying in this relationship violate my values? What's an example of that? So when we look at our values, number one is going to be my physical safety. In all circumstances, one of my highest values is the protection and care of my physical safety in a relationship. And the second one would be, like, like the care and protection of my psychological safety.

And so what I mean by that is not, you know, that I need to be comfortable, not even that I need to feel secure. It's really about like torment and harassment. Are there dangerous things happening to where I am constantly in this like fight or fight because, you know, people are harassing me or there's kind of this looming. threat of something dangerous that could happen because of this other person's behavior. And then my third one is the physical and psychological safety of my minor children and other minor children. So one of my highest values and responsibilities is protection and care of my

children's psychological safety and physical safety. So those are kind of the main ones that I think are pretty universal that I suggest that people adopt. And then you can also have your specific one. like because I've been sober for 20 years, I have a value for the care and protection of my sobriety. So what that means is, going back to the question that we're asking ourselves, is would staying in this relationship violate my values? So I'm looking at that list and I'm saying, if I stay in this relationship, will I be physically safe? If I stay in this relationship, will I be psychologically safe? Are my children safe physically and psychologically? If I cannot meet those responsibilities, then it is against my values to continue in this relationship.

Takeaway three, ask yourself, does staying in this relationship violate my values? Casey suggests some basic values, the physical and psychological safety of ourselves and any minor children. And then you'll have your own values, too, based on your life and situation. That could be protection and care of your sobriety, of your elderly parents, of dependent siblings. And you can get more granular about it, too. Casey says, if the relationship does violate your values, give yourself permission to disengage, even if it seems like the other person can't help their behavior.

And if staying doesn't violate your values, then you're going to ask yourself a simple, straightforward question. Do you want to stay in this relationship? If yes, give yourself permission to stay with boundaries, and we'll get to that. If the answer is no, then we're going to go to this last question. which is would leaving this relationship violate your values.

And this is where it gets really, really unique to you and to the relationship. And it's kind of easiest to talk about in examples. So I think we would all agree that if you're on a third date with someone that has like a mental health crisis breakdown, nobody would say that you're like morally obligated to like see that person through that mental health crisis. But if my husband of 15 years has a mental health crisis, I think we would also probably agree that if I were to say, this is not my stuff, people would be like, well, like maybe it is. Yeah, it's kind of your stuff. And maybe it is for lots of reasons, because again, there's a lot of nuance there.

The truth is, like, I have obligations and responsibilities to my husband or to my sister. that I do not have to someone that I'm on a third date with. And that's when we're going to look at things like, okay, well, I have, how long have I known this person? And what is the interdependence of this relationship, right? Because we don't want to necessarily move into the sunk cost fallacy. Like, because I've known this friend for 15 years, I'm obligated to put up with anything.

Because, again, there's a really big difference between a friend of 15 years that you have a interdependent relationship with. She's seen you through some things. You've seen her through some things. You guys have kind of always been there for each other versus maybe a friend that you've had that for the last 15 years, it's kind of been one-sided. It's been one crisis after another,

and they're not really able to show up for you the way you need. It's always you showing up for them. And maybe that's a completely different scenario to go, you know, this really is worth breaking this off for. So we want to look at history. We want to look at interdependence. and we want to look at severity of harm. If I was stood up by a first date, I'm not obligated to give that person a second chance.

Now, I can if maybe I believe their excuse or I think, well, you know, I want to see because I really like them. Or maybe I go, you know, I wouldn't really into them that much. I'm not doing this. That's fine. But like if my mom stood me up for lunch tomorrow, I think we would all agree that like it would probably be against my values to be like, that's it. I'm never speaking to you again. We'll have more with Casey Davis after the break. So we went through a list of questions to ask yourself if someone that you have a connection to is behaving in a way that bothers you.

And at the end, you're left with basically two options. Option one, as you say in the book, is to give yourself permission to step back or disengue. from the relationship. Any advice on how to do that? So let me give an example of like a marriage. There's lots of ways to disengage in a marriage. Yes, you could get a divorce and never talk to that person again or only talk about custody or whatever.

But think about all of the ways that you could disengage. Like you could have a trial separation. You could decide for whatever reason it's important for me to stay married, but I can't live here because there's too much harm and hurt. I want us to live separately. or I want us to live together, but I don't want this marriage to be romantic anymore. We will be platonic co-parents. We will have our own rooms. If you want to disengage with your parents, again, you could cut your parents off and never talk to them again, but maybe disengaging looks

like you don't do holidays together anymore. You say, love you guys, it's not, you know, but we've decided to stay here for the holidays. Or maybe the disengaging is, you know, I only see my parents for the holidays. One example with friends might be, you know, I need to disengage from this friendship, but I don't necessarily need to tell this person like, I'm not your friend anymore. Maybe I just stop making plans with them and I see them in, you know, acquaintance circles and I'm kind and friendly when I see them, but I just, you know, I'm quietly just going to sort of put some distance there. And so that's kind of what that boundary section is all about. All right. Takeaway 4. At the end of all this, you have basically

two options. One is give yourself permission to step back or disengage, and there are lots of ways to do that. Also, it's not always a permanent decision. Option two is to give yourself permission to stay in the relationship and engage with boundaries. I ask Casey, what might that mean, practically speaking? If you decide to stay and have boundaries, a lot of boundaries are internal. One example might be, let's say that you're kind of doing this over like housework and division of labor. And your partner, you know, goes bicycling for six hours every Saturday. And you've just kind of decided, okay, I'm going to stay in this relationship and this marriage right now. But I have to do something different. I'm kind of drowning under this labor. And so maybe you decide

I'm going to hire a housekeeper. It's in the budget and my partner doesn't like it. But guess what? they can have their own feelings. Like I'm going to tell my partner like, hey, on Sundays, I am going to take a few hours to myself. And again, nuance. This is for a partner who, and this happens a lot, where it's like, my partner is going to keep our children safe. They aren't going to say, no, you're not allowed to.

But they're going to huff and puff about it, right? And so you have this woman who has not been taking care of themselves, not because they can't, but because they really want their partner to be supportive and on board and they're not and they don't like that their partner kind of is being resentful at them and so they've been and so like maybe they go through this and they go, I'm going to stay in this marriage and we're going to work on it but like I can no longer like work to change his opinion of like whether or not I deserve more time to myself. So that would be an example of like I'm staying. There's no there's not really any kind of disengaging but there's these boundaries.

around I'm going to do what's right for me because I feel like they're okay to do and like I'm not going to be managing your emotions about them anymore. Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes it's I'm going to go, I am going to continue to go and visit my dad with dementia and it's going to be very hard for me. So the boundary that I enact is that I go on Sundays and I have a person that I love and trust that I call when I'm done to kind of debrief and then I go home and I read a book quietly and I have dinner with friends and so sometimes it's that like I still have to or need to or want to engage

this relationship but I have to build a lot of support on the back end to be able to take care of myself instead of just kind of feeling like I have to I should be better at this I should be able to handle this or I'm always going into this situation trying to get the other person to change. It's like I'm not doing that anymore. I'm going because I feel like I have a responsibility to this person. It's going to hurt. I'm not trying to get them to change. And I'm going to learn how to take care of myself on the back end. Relationships are messy. And they're so messy that like you really deserve to think through these things without all of the moralizing, you know, you're weak if you stay or you're, you've abandoned them if you go or like you just, you deserve to

to explore all of these questions without that moralizing and that shame kind of surrounding and clouding up your judgment. Casey Davis, thank you so much. Thank you. Casey mentioned a scenario where you're concerned for your safety or the safety of minor children. If you are experiencing intimate partner violence, the national hotline number is 1-800-799 safe. That's 1-800-7-99-safe. That's 799-7-2-33. Okay, time for a recap. Here's a simple list, Casey's questions, for when someone you have a connection to

is behaving in a way that bothers you. Why is this behavior objectionable to me? Is this person willing to work toward collaborative solutions that mitigate pain? Does this person have the capacity to learn the skills to make the necessary changes? Does staying in this relationship violate my values? Do I want to stay in this relationship?

And does leaving this relationship violate my values? At the end, you're going to give yourself permission to stay or to go. That's our show. Have you subscribed to the LifeKit newsletter yet? Every Friday, you'll get even more expert advice on health, money, and more, all curated by the LifeKit team. Think of this as a weekly check-in from your friends at LifeKit. You can subscribe at npr.org slash. Life Kit Newsletter. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals

editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malaga Gerebe. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laslo Janssen. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thank you for listening. Thank you.