i often think of this myself. there does seem to be an amount of truth to this - BUT there also seems to be an amount of self-worth involved in making these decisions.

as i have assessed my own relationships i found that i have some REALLY good friends. these people are outstanding sources of support and forward thinking. i have also found that some of them are/have been not so good. thats part of the learning curve as far as i take it.

as far as long-term realtionships go - i think that when we assess what we as people are willing to put up with in our lives we either raise or lower the bar according to our own levels of committment and/or comfort. we do this sometimes against our better judgement.

we all gauge what we can tolerate from what we have experienced as people. and hindsight is our worst enemy in this process sometimes. after looking at things we sometimes over estimate our own abilites and somehow forget about the pain and suffering we experienced through all of it. we look at our current state and think that since we got through it 'without a scratch' we can do it again.

i relate this to extreme sports. the really committed ones will get back up and repeat their stunt regardless of broken bones or deep cuts. others will realize how dangerous it is and reassess their amount of courage it takes to accomplish the feat, as well as the impact it will make on them in the long run.

many things we cannot forsee, and thats nobodys fault. as far as relationships go you CANNOT control what another is going to do, involve themselves in, or commit themselves to outside of the relationship. we can't help but take these things personally, and to some extent its ok to do so since our own emotional investment is involved. you just have to know, again, where to draw the line.

IMHO