Unfettered: How to Know When You're Finally Letting Go of a Relationship

Sometimes the hardest part is stepping through the door you never meant to find.

“I had the dream again,” Anna says, her voice tentative, as if testing the weight of her own words. My silence hangs in the air, a quiet invitation for her to keep going.

“We’re running down a corridor holding hands, but he keeps tripping over stuff, and then he lets go of my hand and disappears through a door. When I go after him, I’m suddenly falling.” I notice that she’s vigorously twisting the tissue in her hands. “Then I wake up and feel so sad.” Her bottom lip begins to quiver, and I desperately want to hug her.

“That sounds so upsetting, especially when all you want to do is rest from thinking about him.” I glance at the clock. We have exactly six minutes left of the session. “Have you seen him since we met last week?” I ask, already sensing the answer.

“Um…” she stalls, twisting the tissue so tightly that little white flakes begin to fall into her lap. “Maybe a week ago?” She looks at me as if I were there and can confirm this. “I did text him a few days after, but I haven’t heard back yet but…we’re ok.” I hear the hesitation in her voice. “We had a chat and, well, you know… and we’re going to see how it goes. I think I’m happy about it.” I say nothing, just gently nodding my head.

“Thank you for telling me. Remember what I always say?” I smile, and Anna, understanding, smiles back.

“That it’s my life and you’ll support me no matter what I decide?”

I confirm with a gentle and stereotypical head tilt.

“Unless you decide to go on a date with your neighbor who has a telescope pointed at your house, mind. Then we might need to have a team meeting.”

Anna laughs and lets out a calming sigh.

“The thing is,” I say, and Anna looks up from her cupped hand now collecting pieces of tissue, “you don’t seem massively happy…”

She sits for some time in silence before her lip starts to tremble again. “I’m just so frustrated!” she bursts out crying, throwing her head back against the armchair, the big brown blanket, like a trophy from a hunt, cushioning her. “Why do I need to have another go at it? Haven’t I done this to myself enough already?” Her voice trembles under the weight of self-doubt.

The part of Anna that’s starting to find her voice—the part beginning to accept her reality—says, Enough now.

But another part of her whispers, Is it worth one last shot?

“When will I be done?” Her eyes are wide with quiet desperation. “Actually, DONE?”

For a fleeting moment, I convince myself that the answer I’m about to offer won’t be the same one I give to everyone who asks this question. Yet beneath it, there’s a quiet sadness—an understanding of this pain and its cyclical nature. It’s a truth I know all too well.

“When you’re done, you’ll feel it.” I stare at the fire and inhale deeply, exhaling just as purposely, meeting her gaze. “But don’t expect it to be clean. There’s no magic moment where everything clicks, no grand feeling of finality. When you’re done, it’s because you’ve slowly, piece by piece, unraveled yourself from the grip of this relationship. It might not look like what you think. It might be a quiet, steady knowing. It might feel like you’re still caught in it sometimes, still checking his social media, still wondering if he’s thinking about you, still missing the parts of him you loved. But at some point, you’ll stop reaching out. You’ll stop hoping that the same love that hurt you can fix you.”

Falling out of love isn’t a one-time choice—it’s a million small decisions. Or a million soft, painful pushes. It’s the slow, hard work of realising that you want better. More. And knowing, deep down, that the addiction to love, in its most chaotic form, is something that takes time to heal from.

Despite how toxic and dysfunctional some relationships can be, there’s something more terrifying for many: the fear of being alone, forever. I spent a large part of my life running from that fear, and sometimes, late at night, I still feel it lurking outside my window, trying to get in.

"So, what can I do to be done?" Anna asks, her voice trembling as the clock ticks toward the end of our session.

I gently stroke the fluffy black bundle that’s purring contentedly on my lap. “Maybe you haven’t tried all the doors yet?”

She furrows her brow.

“In your dreams, he lets go of your hand and then disappears through random doors, not checking if you’re behind him. You follow him through every one—it doesn’t matter which, as long as you think he’s behind it—but you always fall while trying to reach him.”

Anna takes a heavy breath and rests her head on the armchair, patiently listening.

“You’ve been through so many doors already, but there’s one more door. It’s like that tiny door Alice finds that leads to Wonderland. So small, you might miss it.”

“Which door is that?” she asks, confused.

“It’s called Let Go.” I pause. “The difference between your door and Alice’s is that you don’t need to shrink yourself to fit through it. You already have the key, inside you.”

She looks at me silently, then sits forward, pulling her knees to her chest, wrapping herself tighter in the blanket as she stares out at the trees in the orchard, the red apples bobbing in the wind.

“What if I don’t like it there?” Anna asks, and she suddenly feels like a child who’s just met grief for the first time.

"That’s the thing,” I sigh. “You don’t know what’s behind Let Go. It doesn’t mean goodbye, necessarily. But to go through Let Go, you have to make a deal with yourself, the universe, or God: to choose yourself, even if it hurts like hell. That’s the moment when you can walk through Let Go and not be afraid of what’s on the other side."

I watch Anna, now staring out the window, her eyes distant as if she’s stepping into a new world of possibility.

For a moment, she doesn’t speak, the weight of what I've said hanging between us. Then she turns back to me, a quiet look in her eyes. “Letting go… it sounds so final. But also... kind of freeing.” Her voice trembles just a little, as though she’s testing the idea, seeing if it fits.

“You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for,” I say, my voice gentle, offering her that space. “But when you’re ready, rather than done, you’ll know. It won’t be perfect, but you’ll feel it.”

The clock tells me our time is up, and she exhales slowly, like she’s just put down a weight she’s been carrying for too long. “That’s it for today, I’m afraid. I’ll see you next week?”

She nods, her lips pressing together into a tentative smile. “Until next week,” she says softly, rising from the chair and folding the blanket neatly.

As I walk her to the door and watch her leave, I turn to the window where I used to sit for hours, staring out at the fields beyond, waiting for my own someone to come back, whose doors I used to fall through.

What I found on the other side of Let Go wasn’t a corridor of other doors, but rows and rows of mirrors, all different shapes and sizes. They forced me to look at myself, to confront the reflections I’d avoided for so long. And in those reflections, I found the strength to keep going.

One impossible, heartbreaking breath at a time.

But I don’t tell Anna about the mirrors. It’s not my place to give her the answer she’s not yet ready to hear. As with most things in therapy, this must be discovered on her own—when the time is right for her, when the space she’s in can truly hold the weight of it.

Perhaps, one day, Anna will see her own mirrors too.

Or maybe not.

Either way, that’s her choice.

And I trust she’ll find her way, when the time is right.