Should I Stay or Go? A Clarity Sheet
You have made the decision four times this month and it has not held once. On Tuesday leaving was obvious. By Thursday you could not remember what Tuesday had been about. In between you wrote two lists of pros and cons, and both agreed with whatever you already felt when you picked up the pen. This sheet does not answer the question, and it is worth saying that at the top rather than burying it at the bottom: nothing you fill in below produces a verdict.
The refusal is structural rather than coy. A weighing exercise run by an activated attachment system weighs whatever the activation is holding, which is why one person produces opposite conclusions on two days of the same week. So the six sections do something narrower. They separate what is true now from what you are hoping becomes true, they look backwards at the last year instead of forwards at the next one, and they ask whether you are in any state to decide this today. What comes out is a clearer picture.
Who this worksheet is for
You have been going round this for months, you have asked four friends and had four answers, and you can now argue both sides so well that neither one convinces you.
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Before you fill anything in
Do this on a flat day. Not the day after a row and not the day after a good weekend, because both of those days have already decided. If no flat day is available, do it twice a week apart, deliberately, and read the two versions side by side. Where they disagree is the most interesting thing on the page.
Write about this relationship as it has actually been, not as it was in the first year and not as it would be if the thing you keep raising were finally resolved. Comparing the current version against an improved hypothetical one is the commonest way this exercise goes wrong, because the improved version is not on the menu unless something has genuinely changed.
Nobody else can answer this either. Friends say leave because they hear the bad weeks. Family says stay because they see the good ones. A therapist worth having will decline to tell you at all. Everyone else is working from a fraction of the information, and yours is the only account with the whole relationship in it.
The six sections
Six sets of questions. There is no scoring key at the end and no total to add up.
What is true now, and what you are hoping becomes true
Two columns, and everything goes in one of them.
Put the relationship as it stands this month in the left column, and everything that depends on a change in the right. Most people find the right column longer, and doing most of the emotional work of holding things together. That is worth seeing rather than judging. A relationship can reasonably be held by a change that is genuinely underway. What does not hold is a right column made of things that have been about to happen for two years.
Prompts
- ●True now: what this relationship is actually like this month:
- ●Hoping: what I am waiting for or expecting to change:
- ●Which column is longer, and by how much?
- ●How long has the right column looked like this?
The last year, not the next one
Evidence about change, taken from behind rather than in front.
The forward question, can this get better, has no evidence attached and every hope you hold will answer it yes. The backward question does have evidence. What has actually changed in twelve months, in observable terms, and what did producing that change cost? A shift that arrived after a crisis and reverted within six weeks is a different item from one that has quietly held. This is the closest thing here to a prediction, and it is still only a description of what has already happened.
Prompts
- ●What is different about this relationship compared with a year ago?
- ●What produced that change, and did it hold?
- ●What is exactly the same as it was a year ago?
- ●What was I saying a year ago that I am still saying?
Somebody else's exact facts
The advice you would give if the facts were not yours.
Write the situation out in the third person, using the facts you have just listed and no others, then answer the question as though a friend had brought it to you. The trick only works if you resist both cheats: leaving out the parts that make you look bad, and leaving out the parts that make the relationship look good. What usually happens is that the third-person version reaches an answer much faster than you do. The gap between that answer and yours is a thing to examine, not to act on.
Prompts
- ●The situation in the third person, in five lines:
- ●What I would say to a friend who told me that:
- ●What I left out of the third-person version:
- ●Why is my own answer different from the one I just gave?
What you are actually choosing between
The options that exist, rather than the ones you are comparing.
The comparison running in your head is usually this relationship against a better version of the same relationship, and that is not a choice anyone is being offered. The real options are narrower: this as it is, continuing; this with a specific change somebody has actually agreed to attempt; or not this. Writing down which pair you are choosing between tends to reorganise the whole question, and it surfaces the option people leave out, which is staying for now with a review date attached to it.
Prompts
- ●Option A, staying with things as they are, for another year:
- ●Option B, a specific change someone has agreed to attempt:
- ●Option C, ending it:
- ●Which two have I actually been comparing?
The timing question
Whether you are in a state to decide this at all.
Decisions made in the hour after a row and decisions made in the hour after being forgiven are both unreliable, and insecure attachment produces a great many of both. Check the state before you weight the conclusion: how long since the last incident, how much sleep, whether you are in the flat stretch where leaving feels easy and everything feels remote, or the braced stretch where the thought of it is unbearable. The same facts read completely differently from those two places and neither reading is the honest one.
Prompts
- ●How long since the last incident, good or bad?
- ●What state am I in today: braced, flat, calm, numb?
- ●Would I have written these answers on Tuesday?
- ●What would I want to know before trusting today's version?
What would have to be true, and by when
A review date, which is not the same as a decision.
If you are not deciding today, decide when you will look again and what you will be looking at. Vague reviews never happen because there is nothing to check against. A review with two named, observable things and a date attached does happen, and it stops the question running continuously underneath everything else. This section also rules out the worst available outcome, which is neither staying nor leaving but spending another two years doing neither while the question consumes the space.
Prompts
- ●Two observable things I will look at when I review this:
- ●The date I will look:
- ●What I will do differently between now and then:
Why there is no score
A total would be the most popular thing on this sheet and it would be dishonest. Scoring needs weights, the weights would have to come from you, and they would be set by the same state that has been producing opposite answers all month. A number would launder that into something that looks objective, and people act on numbers in a way they do not act on paragraphs.
A clearer picture is for a better conversation, not a cleaner verdict. Most people who work through something like this do not finish with a decision. They finish with a much more specific account of what is wrong, which is the thing that can be raised with a partner, taken to a therapist, or checked against in three months. The decision stays yours, and it is allowed to take longer than you would like it to.
Before you use this
Safety is not a stay-or-go question and this is the wrong sheet for it. Where there is fear, control, coercion or violence, the work is a safety plan rather than a weighing exercise, and leaving is often the point at which risk is highest, which is precisely why it should not be planned alone. In the UK, Refuge and Women's Aid run free confidential lines around the clock and most countries have an equivalent service. They will talk through options without telling you what to do.
The state you are deciding from has a shape
The timing section asks which stretch you are in, and the quiz gives that stretch a name along with the pattern producing the Tuesday and Thursday versions.
What's Your Attachment Style?
Take our free 2-minute quiz to discover your attachment style and get personalised insights.
Take the Free Quiz →Stay or Go Clarity Sheet Worksheet: FAQ
Should I stay or should I leave my relationship?▼
Why does my answer change from one day to the next?▼
Are pros and cons lists useful for a relationship decision?▼
How do I know if I am giving up too soon?▼
Worksheets for the other styles
- Anxious Attachment worksheet — You re-read messages looking for tone changes, feel panic when replies slow down, or find yourself doing things to get reassurance that you later wish you had not done.
- Avoidant Attachment worksheet — You need space when things get close, go quiet under conflict, find faults in partners as intimacy grows, or feel relief when plans get cancelled.
- Fearful-Avoidant Attachment worksheet — You crave closeness then feel trapped by it, end relationships you wanted, or feel like two different people depending on the week.
- Secure Attachment worksheet — You came out secure and want to know what to keep doing, or you are building earned security and want the target described in behaviour rather than adjectives.
Worksheets by situation
- No contact plan (a structured 30 days) — You have decided on a period of no contact and keep breaking it in small ways you then have to argue yourself out of feeling bad about.
- Breakup recovery plan (30 days, by pattern) — The relationship has ended and you are going over it constantly, or not going over it at all in a way that is starting to worry you.
- Pursue-withdraw cycle breaker — One of you chases the conversation and one of you needs it to stop, and you have both explained this to each other many times without anything changing.
- Early dating worksheet (first 90 days) — You keep ending up in the same kind of situation and would like to notice it happening this time, rather than in hindsight.
- Boundaries worksheet (setting and holding them) — You have read about boundaries, agreed with all of it, and still cannot work out what to actually say on Thursday evening.
- Conflict repair worksheet (after an argument) — You resolve arguments by waiting until they stop mattering, and you have noticed the list of subjects you both avoid getting longer.
- Self-soothing plan (written before you need it) — You know what you are supposed to do when the panic arrives and you have never once done it in the moment.
- Family of origin timeline worksheet — You recognise your pattern and want to understand where it came from without turning it into a case against your parents.
Or go back to all free attachment worksheets, including the one-page cheat sheet covering all four styles.
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