When is it time to end a relationship?

When is the time to end a relationship if you are in love with your partner?

It might be helpful to reframe this painful reality as not the ending of a relationship but, rather, as a transformation of its current iteration. I use the word “reality” because, since you’re asking this question, it’s likely that something has signaled to you that it’s time to accept the present circumstances, which perhaps means the partnership is no longer meeting your needs or expectations. It’s important to differentiate between the two, as your fundamental needs (the ones you nurture yourself first and foremost but need support within a relationship to feel seen) are not negotiable. Your expectations can be.

Romantic love is, by nature, rife with the conditions we place on it. In Buddhism, the concept of delusion is used to explain the ways in which we each have images or avatars of the people we love in our minds, and that is why we feel frustration when these people’s actions or ways of being do not line up with our mind’s images. But those images are not real — our mind has fabricated them to serve our own needs. This is a delusion. Is your partner or relationship not meeting the expectations your mind set up for them, and is this the source of your suffering? Is their failure to meet these expectations affecting your health and well-being, or is it your expectations that are doing so? If it is the former, then this is cause for concern.

An examination of your moon sign can help light the way. Your moon sign is what you need to feel safe, and consider if that need has gone unfulfilled or unacknowledged in your relationship in a sustained manner. If that is the case, then it is possible that this relationship is no longer healthy for you. “Healthy” is subjective, and only you know what that means for you. What if “till death do us part” became, “I will be in partnership with you as long as it is healthy for both of us to do so”?

It sounds as if your love for this person is certain, and that is a beautiful thing to still have. Reach deep into that love and allow yourself to be honest and curious about whether or not a transformation of the relationship’s current form would be the most loving thing to embark upon for you and your partner’s emotional, spiritual, mental and physical health. Commit yourself to the practice of nonjudgmental inner exploration, and you will know when it is time to act. We are never asked to know the outcome or even the trajectory of the journey — we just need to know the next step. And the next step will reveal itself to you at exactly the right time.

Goth Shakira is an Aquarian Queen of Pentacles divining and loving in Los Angeles.