Why We Only Speak Up When We're Ready to Leave

There's a pattern I see come up over and over again when I'm working with women, and I want to slow down and really walk through it - because it matters more than most people realize.

It's the tendency to finally speak up in a relationship only when you're already ready to leave.

On the surface, it might seem like one thing. But there's actually an important distinction happening here, and understanding it can change how you think about communication in your relationship entirely.

When They Respond at the Last Minute - and When You Waited Too Long

Here's the distinction I want to draw.

If your partner only starts to show up, make changes, or suddenly become more attentive when you're about to walk out the door — that's not them finally getting it. That's them scrambling for security because they're facing loss. It looks like growth, but it's really fear of abandonment.

That's different from a situation where you realize: the first time I really let my partner know how I was feeling was when I was already done.

In that second scenario, they didn't have a chance they failed to take. They genuinely didn't know.

There's a real difference between a partner who was given chances and didn't take them - and a partner who was never really given the chance at all.

Why We Wait (And Why It Makes Total Sense)

I understand why we hold things in. Speaking up is hard - especially when the relationship already feels unsteady, or your partner hasn't been receptive to other things you've tried to bring up. The last thing you want to do is say something vulnerable and have it land badly.

So instead, we go quiet. We absorb it. We tell ourselves it's not a big deal, or we'll bring it up when the timing is better. And then we don't.

What tends to happen is that something finally cracks us open. We're in the middle of a fight, or we've been mentally replaying everything we've been unhappy about for so long that we finally hit a wall. And when we get there, we don't just say "I'm upset about this one thing." We say everything — every moment we felt unseen, every resentment that's been quietly building - and then we don't just express that we're hurting. We say we're leaving.

I understand how that happens. But it's a very different experience for both people than having those smaller conversations along the way.

What Changes When the Conversation Comes Too Late

When you've been holding things in - not letting your partner know what you've been feeling, needing, or wanting - and then you finally say something when you're already overwhelmed with one foot out the door, the timing changes what their response means.

If they respond at that point, that's actually appropriate. That's what we'd hope to see from a partner who cares. But by then, it may feel like too little too late - not because they're unwilling, but because the conversation came too late to give the relationship actual room to work through things.

A lot of times our feelings seem so obvious to us because we're living inside them every day. We assume the other person must sense it too. But they usually don't.

So when we finally say "I'm done," it can genuinely feel like it came out of nowhere for them — even though we've been carrying it for a very long time.

That doesn't mean your feelings aren't valid. It doesn't mean you were wrong to feel what you felt. It means the communication didn't happen early enough to give the relationship a chance to respond — to work through the smaller things as they came up, instead of arriving at one enormous, almost irreparable breaking point.

The Case for Speaking Up Earlier Than You Think You Need To

This is really what I want you to take from this.

Speaking up earlier - not when you're already at the edge, but while there's still room to actually work with what's there - gives the relationship a fighting chance. It gives your partner information they need. And honestly, it gives you information too, because how they respond to the smaller things will tell you a lot about what you're actually working with.

When we hide things away and hope they'll resolve on their own, and they don't, what we're often left with is an explosion that can feel impossible to come back from. Not because the relationship was necessarily unsalvageable, but because we never gave it the chance to course-correct along the way.

If Speaking Up Early Doesn't Come Naturally to You

I get it. For a lot of women, staying quiet has been a survival strategy. It kept the peace. It avoided conflict. It felt safer than the risk of being dismissed or made to feel like too much.

So if this is something you struggle with, that makes sense. It's worth understanding why - and worth getting some support around it, because learning to voice what you need before you're already at your limit is one of the most important things you can do for your relationships and for yourself.

If you want support around that, reach out at [email protected]