When it’s time to step away from a friendship, relationship or job

And having fallen out of love is, he says, one of the main indications that a relationship is over because it’s extremely rare for someone to fall back in love with their partner, once they’ve fallen out of love.

“Once your partner and you have become detached” – the psychological term for having fallen out of love – “it’s almost like we are going back to zero, in the sense that we’re talking about the prospect of falling in love with a new person, even though we’ve got that history together,” he says. And, Burckhardt explains, not only is it rare to fall in love with someone – full stop – but to do so after there’s likely been “so much hurt” from that person adds an additional barrier to it happening.

Key signs that you’ve fallen out of love include if you feel like “flatmates living under the same roof” and if you have no desire to be intimate.

Another flat-out sign that your relationship is likely irreparable? If you share one of three critical primary emotions with your partner – sadness, fear or shame – and it doesn’t trigger an empathetic response, says Burckhardt. Sharing these emotions, he says, is crucial to resolving issues with a partner, which is essential for maintaining the relationship over the long term.

A surprising sign that you’d think might be a deal-breaker, but isn’t necessarily is constant fighting, says Elisabeth Shaw, CEO of Relationships Australia.

“Couples that repeatedly fight, they might think, surely the relationship’s over, but it’s not so much that you’re fighting – that could be as much about being a bad habit, or a poor fighting style, or poor behaviour that can be unlearned. If the fights are more nasty, minimising, dismissive… that’s more the worry than the issue you’re raising [and fighting about]. Because what you need is a partner who takes you seriously. They don’t have to agree with you.”

But if you bring up serious problems, and your partner has no interest in making any changes?

“That’s a red flag,” says Shaw.

When to leave a job

“The only key time when you have to leave [a job] immediately is where it’s really affecting your physical or mental health,” says Dr David Cheng, a senior lecturer in business and economics at the Australian National University.

For everyone else, it can be useful to ask yourself, “What do you want it to read on your tombstone?” and “What would you like to be known for?” says Timothy Bednall, an associate professor at Swinburne University’s school of business, law and entrepreneurship.

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“People probably don’t put that much thought into it [their career] to be honest”, says Bednall, who once worked in career counselling. “I’ve had a number of conversations with people about whether or not they wanted to transition from their role… [For many, the struggle] was actually not really knowing their own values. And not really knowing what would make them happy.”

So, taking a good hard look at your core values – whether it’s making money and having a job with prestige, or helping others – will help you determine if you’re in the right job, or whether you need to pursue a new path, he says.

But we also need to be cautious not to buy into the great social media lie, espoused by many employers, that there’s the “soul mate” equivalent of a job for each of us, that we should hold out for it, and walk away from anything else, says Collett.

“I tell all my students, ‘You’re not looking for the perfect job that you walk into, and suddenly, it’s like a cosmic alignment and you feel like you’re in the place you’re meant to be,’” he says, referring to the vision commonly seen in Instagram posts of people deep-sea diving, or teaching students in Africa, and the caption that they’re “living their best life”. “First off, that [cosmic alignment] probably exists for some people, and that’s just a happy accident,” says Collett. “For most people, I think it’s unrealistic to put that pressure on us.”

Instead, a critical – and undervalued – factor that should help people decide whether a job is a keeper or not is if it will enable them to have the lifestyle they desire.

“A certain level of money is great for quality of life,” says Collett, and, of course, necessary to pay the bills. Finding some meaning in fulfillment in a job is important, too. “Beyond that, you’ve got to think about, what are you sacrificing? Are you working a lot outside of work [hours]? So often with clients, someone will say, ‘I’m stressed at work’. They’ll often be on really good money, but absolutely wrecking themselves for this job. They don’t have any free time, people have actually walked out of their life because they don’t have time for them.”

When to leave a friendship?

There’s a good reason it’s so hard for us to ditch friendships. The understanding that they are critical to our wellbeing goes back to ancient Greece, says Professor Timothy O’Leary, head of humanities and languages at The University of NSW.

As he points out, Aristotle once wrote: “Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.” And for the Stoic philosophers, like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca The Younger, “a friend was the person who helped you live a better life,” says O’Leary, who has worked as a counsellor to help people find meaning and make major life changes. “You shared your struggles, your weaknesses, your challenges with a friend.”

We’d do well to heed some of their advice when weighing up whether a friend’s annoying habits – or infuriating and hurtful slights – are enough to warrant ditching them, or whether they’re worth keeping for the long haul, he says.

“He’s writing in his journal at the end of the day, ‘Today I got really angry at this guy [friend]… I shouldn’t let myself lose my composure over this little thing’,” says O’Leary, paraphrasing Marcus Aurelius.

“You have to be non-judgmental and supportive,” he adds. “So even if somebody does something that is hurtful, or you don’t approve of, don’t judge the whole person for that thing that they’ve done.”

This can be crucial to saving worthwhile friendships when we can be so otherwise tempted to chuck them in, says Burckhardt. It’s so easy to feel slighted, or hurt, by a friend. But, frequently, these disappointments are the result of “mismatched approaches to friendship”, rather than malice.

Say, for instance, one person likes to put a lot of effort into planning catch-ups, and keeping in contact, while their friend is more of a “let’s just call each other last minute” person. Or, one person expects to receive a call from a friend, after sharing bad news, while the other person thinks a text is sufficient. These aren’t necessarily the behaviour of bad friends, but can often be chalked up to different expectations and ways of interacting.

“Maybe try to see it” – the other person’s relational style and expectations – “through a different angle,” says Burckhardt, noting that “emotional regulation” is a huge part of managing friendship. This means handling our disappointments internally, by considering that our friend might be going through a rough patch or not meant to have hurt us by what they did, rather than lashing out at them. Or, alternatively, raising our disappointment with a friend, so we can resolve it.

In contrast, a sign that you should drop a friendship, says O’Leary, is when you feel worse about yourself after every interaction with your friend.

“We are always being told we should try and understand people’s positions” – why they do what they do – “and we should do that, but… if it is damaging, it just makes you feel really bad, you don’t need to understand. You just need to give due weight to the toll its taking on you.”

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