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Few things can make one more miserable than being stuck in a bad marriage or in an unhappy relationship. Hours, days, weeks, months, years of emptiness, lack of empathy, lack of intimacy, animosity, hatred. Why on earth would anyone want to stay in such a situation? After all, our time in this world is finite. The scent of cardamom and cinnamon while decorating the Christmas tree, the feeling of waves gently lapping on your feet as you enter the sea, the full moons you admire in the hot August night – endless, don’t they seem? Hard to believe you have 10, 20, maybe 30 of those left before you die. Why would you waste them being with someone that doesn’t love you and, most probably, despises you? Maybe the Bard has the answer:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;