Sunk-Cost Fallacy In Failed Open Relationships

I'm mostly writing this post due to a BORU post about a one sided open relationship that thankfully ended with OOP dumping her boyfriend. It made me think about two things - the people that wind up staying in failed and unhappy open relationships, and one blog on Medium that I had to stop reading due to it being infuriating and heartbreaking.

I've seen so many posts where people in these relationships stay due to intertwined finances, kids, or the fact that their spouse/partner gives them little crumbs of love and affection, and I'm torn between feeling sorry for them and feeling frustrated and wanting to give them a smack upside the head.

On the one hand, I know fully well that unhealthy relationships are incredibly hard to leave, ESPECIALLY when you have the above mentioned factors. Those only add on custody battles, hours of mediation on who pays what and who gets what. I completely get it. But on the other hand, it's extremely exhausting seeing these people complaining of the same things over and over again, only to insist "No, my spouse is actually super amazing and awesome!" when they found out that the spouse in question broke yet another boundary and shut down instead of owning up to it. People both in this subreddit and on others will tell them to leave or at the very least try and talk to their spouse, only for the wronged party to say "Yeah I ignored everyone's advice 😅". They fail to realize that if they have kids, all they'll learn is to either follow in the footsteps of their parents and enter an unhealthy relationship like theirs, or they'll get the fuck out of dodge and not want anything to do with them.

I don't know. It's both fascinating and frustrating.