“Don’t want to leave you really, I’ve invested too much time to give you up that easy to the doubts that complicate your mind…we belong together.”
Pat Benatar sang those lyrics 30 years ago, but the sentiment is by no means old-fashioned.
Even today, there are many people who stay in relationships for one reason and one reason only; “I have invested too much to leave now. If I leave it, all the years and energy I already put in will be lost.”
The Sunk Cost Fallacy shows up nearly everywhere in our lives. It is what is responsible for your sitting through a movie even when, 15 minutes in, you already knew it was an awful film. You paid for the ticket so you feel the need to make sure that money isn’t lost. What you don’t realize is that you’re actually increasing your loss by adding wasted time to wasted money.
In business, companies pour in money into projects and keep doing so even when the project is an obvious flop. Why? They’ve already invested too much into it and that makes it harder to abandon it even when it’s not working out. In nearly all such cases, they only end up wasting even more money eventually.
Many times I have felt compelled to read a mediocre book to the end just because I bought it with my money and I’m already 50 pages in so I might as well finish it. In fact, before I learnt about this fallacy, this used to happen to me a whole lot.
It is no different when it comes to relationships. He doesn’t seem to be into you anymore, she doesn’t respect you, he’s cheating on you unrepentantly…but you must protect your investment. If you leave, all the months/years you already put into the relationship will go down the drain. So you stay, despite the rancor, bitterness and strife that characterizes your life. You stay even though you’re both making each other miserable instead of adding value. You stay even though it is clear that he will not marry you, and marriage is what you desire.
As you’ve probably figured out at this point, this is not very smart. It is painful to realize one has made a hopeless investment, especially where emotions are involved, but investing even more because of this is not in your best interest.
Assess your relationship objectively. Is this what you really want? Are you fulfilled? Do you have any real, solid reasons for staying on apart from the fact that you have already put in X years of your life? Give yourself an honest answer.
I don’t need to tell you where to go from there; you already know.
About the author: Joy Ehonwa is a writer, editor and online proofreader who is passionate about relationships and personal development. She runs Pinpoint Creatives, a copy-editing, ghostwriting and transcription business, and blogs at www.anafricandiva.wordpress.com and www.girlaware.wordpress.com
