Tug of War Is a Two-Person Game, Part II: Dropping the Rope

It took me a long time to understand that sometimes, to win the tug-of-war, we don’t need to pull harder — we simply just need to let go. We’re taught to use our strength to fight and endure, but often the real win can be in the quiet surrender. Letting go isn’t weakness. It’s the moment strength no longer needs to prove itself.

For years, I fought relentlessly for my marriage. I believed that effort, persistence, and love could fix what was breaking. I told myself that if I just tried harder, asked for less, gave more, changed more — it would be enough. Enough to be chosen. Enough to feel seen. Enough to feel safe.

Looking back now, I see how much that fight consumed me. I see how much energy it took away from my presence with my kids, especially during the years surrounding his infidelity and everything that followed. I see now that I wasn’t just fighting for a relationship — I was living inside a cycle I didn’t yet know how to name.

In my last post, I wrote about that cycle — the toxic loop that exists in many unhealthy relationships. Ours followed a familiar pattern: conflict would arise, tension would build, I would try to address it, and I would be ignored. When calm attempts failed, I got louder. When that didn’t work, I got angrier. Then came his silent treatment — something I knew could last indefinitely. Eventually, I would apologize, the tension would break, and things would feel peaceful again. Until the next conflict arose.

For a long time, I didn’t see this for what it was: a pattern. It had become our normal. But it wasn’t normal. It was survival.

The moment things began to change was when I finally recognized the pattern — not just his role in it, but mine. As my therapist once said, only one person needs to change to disrupt a cycle. And for the first time, I understood that I didn’t need his participation to stop playing the game.

The spring before my marriage ended, I made a deliberate decision to step out of the cycle. When conflict came up, I addressed it calmly. When that didn’t work, I stopped escalating. I stopped chasing resolution. I stopped apologizing. I went about my days. I went about my life.

The dynamic shifted. What I expected was more silence, which did come. But when I no longer filled my role as the release valve, what came next was reaction. The silence I had once endured now seemed intolerable to him. The role I had always played — the one who caused the problem, escalated it, and fixed it — was suddenly vacant. And without it, the cycle had nowhere to land.

Around this same time, we lived through a few terrifying weeks when we believed my son might be diagnosed with leukemia. It ultimately turned out to be a very rare but treatable autoimmune condition. But in those weeks, there were hospital visits, bone biopsies, endless testing, and long meetings with doctors. I was the one traveling with my son — old enough to understand what was happening — holding the uncertainty for him and shielding him from the fear that quietly consumed me.

And even then, in the middle of one of the scariest times in my life, my ex doubled down on trying to pull me back into the pattern with text messages telling me that I “needed to think about my behavior and how it was effecting our marriage.” These messages were sent while I was in the hospital with our son.

Each time he tried to bait me back in with guilt, I responded the same way:
I love you. I want this marriage to work. But there are two people in this marriage, and fixing it can’t be my responsibility alone.

I repeated it calmly. Consistently. Without drama. Without pursuit.

Then I stepped back — not to punish, not to manipulate, but to observe.

It felt like watching through a two-way mirror. When I stopped playing my part, something became unmistakably clear: the relationship did not repair itself. When I stopped being the fixer, he doubled down on his efforts to keep us in the cycle. And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

That was the first time I truly dropped the rope.

Not in anger.
Not in resignation.
But in clarity.

Letting go didn’t end the conflict immediately. It didn’t make things easier overnight. What it did was remove me from a game that required my constant participation to exist. And once I stopped holding the rope, I could finally see how much it had been costing me — my energy, my peace, my presence, my sense of self.

It also became clear that he did not want to change. Our couples therapist described him as the piece on the chess board that didn’t want to move. Everyone else in the game had to move around him.

The best way I can describe what being inside a toxic cycle is like is this:

Imagine being a passenger on a runaway train that’s barely staying on the tracks. Your partner is the one driving that out of control train. You’re being thrown from side to side — just trying to keep your footing and avoid a concussion. You’re not driving, but you’re absorbing the impact. You plead with the driver to slow down, scrambling to troubleshoot everything that’s going wrong, shouting solutions, reading the manual while the person driving the train is unbothered. Dare I say, even getting a kick out of watching you flounder in the chaos they have created.

When I stepped out of the cycle, it felt like stepping off the train entirely. I was no longer being thrashed around. I was standing on the platform, watching him drive — watching him try to derail it — but from a place of distance. And in that distance, something shifted. I could finally see what was happening clearly. I could make decisions calmly. I wasn’t reacting inside the chaos anymore; I was observing it from solid ground and seeing it for what it actually was.

And once I saw that, I knew there was no going back.

I wasn’t willing to keep riding that train.

I wasn’t willing to keep holding that rope.

Years later, the rope still appears. In my divorce, it came disguised as incomplete discovery, missed deadlines, hidden assets, cohesive control and an inflexibility to compromise. It comes disguised in my co-parenting as missed parenting time, failure to communicate and a disregard for the wishes of our children. It shows up in quieter, more random moments — as nasty text messages, passive-aggressive threats, and mean, middle-school-level insults.

The rope is there just waiting to be picked up. But I don’t anymore.

Because I’ve learned something essential:
not every tension needs resolution.
not every accusation needs a response.
not every conflict deserves your energy.
not every opinion is a fact.

Now, I pause and take a breath. I remind myself that no matter how I respond, there is someone on the other side determined to see me as the villain. In his world, his narrative is real to him, regardless of the evidence that says otherwise. Responding would mean picking up the rope.

Instead, I write. I journal. I go for walks or to a yoga class. Mostly, I think about my kids and all of the other things in my life that I love and I remind myself how blessed I am.

Letting go of the rope is not giving up.
It’s choosing yourself.
It’s protecting your peace.

It’s understanding that the game only continues if both people keep pulling — and realizing that when you drop the rope and step away, you finally have space for the moments, connections, and joy that were impossible to experience while you were still pulling.