Letting Go of Potential: Choosing Reality Instead
Share
Letting Go of Relationships: or, How I Stopped Loving Potential More Than Reality
(…and why my brain deserves a slow clap for finally catching up)
I Finally Stopped Loving Potential More Than Reality — Turns Out, That Was The Relationship I Needed To End.
Letting go of a relationship—whether it’s a romatic relation, friendship that faded, a colleague who never quite met you halfway, a community you no longer belong in, or even a past self you’ve outgrown—can feel like performing emotional cardio without warming up first.
And the part that hurts most isn’t always what actually happened.
It’s what could have happened.
We grieve the unlived future.
The version of the relationship that existed only in our minds.
The potential.
The fantasy.
We don’t only lose someone or something—we lose the story we thought we were writing.
The Neuroscience of Holding On
(a.k.a. why I cling like a stubborn octopus)
Neuroscientist Helen Fisher reminds us that attachment lights up reward systems in the brain much like addiction. Lovely news. This explains why we can stay emotionally loyal to situations that are more “almost” than “actual.”
When we’re attached to potential, we’re often stuck in intermittent reinforcement—those rare, shiny moments where things almost work. Where the friend shows up once in a blue moon. Where the team has one great week. Where the version of ourselves we’re trying to become flickers through, briefly. And our brain goes:
“Maybe one more try.”
The gamble keeps us hooked.
Not on reality—on possibility.
Potential = a Projection, Not a Person (or job, or identity)
Loving potential is essentially falling for a mental draft.
A future script.
A PowerPoint that never left slide one.
Psychology calls this the false consensus effect—the assumption that others will grow, behave, or evolve in the way we expect or wish. We start interacting with our imagined version of the relationship instead of the living, breathing reality.
The trouble is:
People, teams, communities—even our identities—aren’t design projects. They don’t owe us transformation just because we can picture it beautifully.
The Moment Reality Wins Over Fantasy
Letting go is choosing truth over wishful architecture.
It’s acknowledging what is instead of negotiating with what might be—eventually—if all planets align and everyone has a breakthrough at the same time.
It’s the brave shift from:
“I wish it was like this.”
to
“This is what it is. Can I live with that?”
Philosopher Martin Buber would call this the difference between relating to ideas versus relating to beings.
Between I-It (you as a concept)
and I-Thou (you as you are today).
The Mirror Turn
(yes, I sighed too)
Sometimes what we’re really attached to isn’t the relationship—it’s our role inside it. The identity we held. The purpose we served. The potential we were chasing.
So the gentle question becomes:
Am I holding on because it’s real?
Or because I’m in love with the idea of what it could be?
If I stop editing reality to fit the story in my head, I can finally ask:
Is this relationship—this version—truly nourishing as it is?
Not someday.
Not potentially.
Now.
The Science of Self-Kindness
(spoiler: it’s tougher than it sounds)
Researcher Kristin Neff teaches that self-compassion isn’t soft—it's courageous. Staying in relationships out of hope instead of reality often delays compassion. We cling because releasing feels like failure, when really:
Sometimes letting go is the act of love.
For them.
For us.
For who we’re becoming.
Letting go says:
“I won’t ask you to be someone else.
And I won’t ask myself to shrink to stay.”
Final Reflection
Letting go is not quitting.
It’s graduating.
It’s respecting what is over romanticizing what might have been.
It’s freeing ourselves—and others—from being unfinished projects in our minds.
Because real connection grows in truth, not hypothetical versions.
And when we stop clinging to potential,
we make space for what’s real, mutual, living, and aligned.
Sometimes letting go isn’t the end.
It’s the first step toward relating from honesty instead of hope.