Letting Go When They Are Still in Your Life Every Day: The Hard Questions

How do you let go of someone who video calls you every Sunday night, and always opens with: "Why are you looking so dark and thin lately?"

Most of what gets written about letting go is written for people who have already left. An ex, a friend who cut contact, a stretch of life that is over. They are far away, and the distance does half the work. But the person who is still in your life every day — your mother, your father-in-law, the coworker at the next desk — comes with no distance at all. You see them in the morning, again at lunch, and they message you on Zalo at night.

If someone like that is wearing you out, and "just let it go" sounds like advice from someone who has never been where you are, you are not being difficult. That advice really is missing half of itself. This piece goes through four hard questions about letting go when the other person is still there, every day, right in front of you.

Letting go here is not cutting someone off, and it is not ceasing to love them. Above all, it is not silent endurance. What gets set down is something you carry in your head about that person — usually a kind of waiting — not the person, and certainly not yourself.

What are you letting go of with your parents, when you still call home every week?

The seven o'clock call on Sunday

Seven on a Sunday evening. I am sitting on the edge of the bed, my back against the wall, the phone propped on a pillow. Outside the window a bread seller's cart goes down the alley calling out. My mother's face fills the screen, slightly tilted, because she holds the phone too low.

— Why are you looking so dark and thin lately?

— I'm fine, Mum, same as always.

— Fine how. Auntie Tư's girl got married, has two kids, and she still looks fresh.

— Yes, Mum.

Twelve minutes later I hang up, sit still for a while, then open the fridge and stand staring into it without taking anything. Every week it is the same. I know her first line in advance, I know roughly which minute Auntie Tư's name will come up. And every week I still feel let down.

What you are waiting for on the other end of the line

It is easy to think what wears you out is the things she says. She compares, she criticises, so you need to let those remarks go, treat them as passing wind. But if it were only the remarks, you would have got used to them long ago. It has been thirty-odd years.

What actually leaves you deflated is what you carry into each call: a small hope, never said out loud, that this time she will say something different. That she will ask "are you tired" instead of "why are you so thin". That just once, she will say "you've done well". Every Sunday night that hope is opened when you press call and closed again when you hang up. The letdown does not come from what she says. It comes from the gap between what she says and the line you were standing there waiting for.

So what needs setting down is not your mother, and not her words. It is the imagined call — the one in which she is a different person.

That sounds sad. But it also does something odd: once you stop waiting for that other line, you start hearing the lines she is actually saying. "Why are you so thin" is sometimes the only way she knows how to ask "are you all right".

The first time, many people find step three a little strange, even a little hurtful: telling yourself the line someone else should have said. That feeling is real; let it sit there. Knowing you did it right is not the call being happier. It is the familiar criticism arriving and you seeing it come instead of being ambushed by it. After about a week, the remarks are all still there, but the stretch of sitting still after you hang up gets shorter. One week I even managed to ask her about the orchid pots on the porch, and she talked for seven minutes without mentioning Auntie Tư once.

On a busy day, keep only step two: one silent question before you press call. Ten seconds.

Stopping the waiting, then stopping the calls

The easiest slip is setting down the waiting by going cold. Calling less often, answering in clipped phrases, telling her nothing so there is nothing to criticise. It is tempting because it hurts less straight away, and because from outside it looks like real letting go. But that is closing a door, not setting something down. You are still waiting; you have just stopped giving her the chance to disappoint you. The piece on letting go of expectations, not people goes into exactly this. What to do instead is keep calling at the same rhythm, and only change what you bring into the call.

And every family is different. Some people live with their parents, some are caring for a parent who is ill, some live a thousand kilometres away. Nobody but you knows what rhythm fits your home.

What about the coworker at the next desk, when there is no getting away for eight hours a day?

Typing hard again. Sighing again. "Oh, you haven't sent it yet?" again, right as you are sending it.

Nine fifteen on a Monday morning. The woman at the next desk has just opened a box of sticky rice, and the smell of fried shallots drifts over. I have not done anything yet, but my head already holds three notes about her: last week she presented my part of the report as her team's, on Thursday she cut me off in the meeting, and this morning she asked that question again.

A scoreboard nobody asked you to keep

The obvious version is that she is unpleasant, and you need to learn to ignore her. But how do you ignore someone sitting an arm's length away.

Look closer, and what wears you out for eight hours is not quite her. It is the scoreboard you are keeping on her. Every time she cuts you off, a mark. Every sigh, a mark. And a scoreboard has to be kept up to date, so you have to watch her all day, hear every keystroke, read every message in the team chat to see whether she mentioned you. She does her job for eight hours. You do yours, plus eight hours of watching her. The most exhausted person in this story is the one holding the scoreboard.

Setting something down here does not mean no longer finding her difficult. It means no longer keeping watch.

Try it like this for one ordinary working day:

1. Stick a small sticky note in the corner of your screen.
2. Every time you catch yourself replaying something she just did, draw a small tick on it, without writing what it was.
3. Go back to exactly what you were doing.
4. At the end of the day, count the ticks, then throw the note away.

The first day I counted twenty-three ticks, and sat looking at the number for a long time. Not because she did twenty-three irritating things. Because I had replayed them that many times. After a week the number of ticks had not dropped much, but each replay got shorter: from a full narration down to a single word, "again", and then back to the screen. That is the sign it is working. Not her becoming less difficult, but you spending less of your time on her.

No longer keeping watch is not the same as no longer speaking up

The easy confusion is thinking that dropping the scoreboard means dropping the real issues too. Her taking credit for your work is a work matter, not something to talk yourself out of. Silence is tempting because it avoids friction, and because it sounds generous. But staying quiet here only makes the scoreboard in your head longer. What to do instead: separate the two. The feelings, set down. The work issue, say it, with facts, once, while you are calm — note clearly which part you did in an email to the whole team, or mention it briefly to whoever leads the work, in whatever way your workplace normally handles it. Trying to change her personality is not your job, and the piece on stopping trying to change others covers exactly where those two things differ.

Does letting go mean enduring in silence?

No.

This is the thing I most want to say clearly in this piece, because it is where the words "letting go" get misused the most, and the person who pays is always the one already struggling.

A family meal, and "I'll just let it go to keep the peace"

Someone I know told me that at almost every meal, a person in her home spoke harshly to her: mocking her cooking in front of the kids, calling her a freeloader because she earned less, one day throwing a pair of chopsticks down on the table. She had read somewhere that anger only hurts yourself, so each time she bent her head, reached for the greens, and told herself: fine, let it go, keep the peace.

Three years. She was not angry any more, she said. She was just tired, always tired, and she no longer wanted to go home.

Two different things, and you need both

On the surface, setting something down means not reacting, to keep things calm. But mixing the two together like that ruins both.

Setting down happens inside: what you carry in your head, the waiting, the scoreboard, the imagined call. A boundary happens outside: what you allow other people to do to you. A person can set down the waiting and still say plainly "I won't accept being spoken to like that". Silent endurance sets nothing down at all. It holds on to everything, just somewhere nobody can see, and what is held finds its way out as exhaustion.

A boundary sentence does not need to be long or clever. It needs to be sayable while you are calm, and repeatable many times without explanation. Something like "I've heard you, this is my decision" or "I don't want to hear that in front of the kids". Practise saying it out loud on your own a few times first, while washing dishes or standing under the shower, so your mouth is used to it when you need it. The first time you say it, your voice usually shakes or comes out sharper than you meant. That is fine. After a few times it sounds more like you.

The usual way this breaks is waiting until you are furious before you say it. It is tempting because that is when you finally feel entitled to speak. But said at boiling point, the boundary sentence becomes a fight, the other person argues with your tone instead of hearing the words, and you conclude "there's no point saying anything" and go back to swallowing it. Say it earlier, smaller, the first time rather than the tenth.

When it is no longer something to let go of

One more thing has to be said directly. Being insulted constantly, threatened, hit, having your money or your movements controlled, being cut off from friends and family — that is not something to practise letting go of. It is abuse, and nothing in this piece is meant for it. What to do is find support: tell a friend you trust, reach out to a trained professional, and if you or your children are in danger, contact the police or a local support service. It is not happening because you have not been forgiving enough.

When is it time to leave?

Am I staying out of love, or out of fear of what people will say?

Some people ask me this after trying everything: they have stopped waiting, stopped keeping watch, stated their boundaries, and still their stomach knots every morning as they walk into that place.

Leaving is not losing

Many people think leaving is a failure at letting go. You practised setting things down and you still have to leave, so you must not have practised enough. Thinking that way keeps people staying long past the point they should have gone.

But sometimes leaving is the setting down — setting down the belief that you have to put up with everything to be a good child, a good wife, a good employee. That belief weighs more than any difficult person, because it follows you all the way home.

And leaving comes in many sizes, not only the largest. Changing desks when the chance comes up. Asking to move to another project when the company reshuffles. One less shared meal a week. Going back to your hometown for one day instead of three. Moving out when circumstances allow. And with some relationships, stopping entirely. Each size fits a different situation, and only you know how far yours allows.

One small thing you can do this week: take a sheet of paper and write down the three smallest sizes of leaving you could genuinely manage in the coming month. You do not have to do them yet. Just see that between "enduring forever" and "walking away from everything" there are plenty of other places to stand.

The body often knows first

There are a few signs worth listening to, because they tend to arrive before your head is willing to admit anything: your stomach knotting every morning before you see that person, your heart racing at the sound of their motorbike pulling in, your children going quiet whenever that person is around. When it comes to safety — yours or your children's — do not wait for any other sign.

The easy mistake is leaving in a fit of anger and coming back three days later, then leaving again, then coming back again. It is tempting because anger gives you enough strength to walk out the door. But strength borrowed from anger runs out when the anger cools, and each time you return you trust yourself a little less. Decide the size of the leaving when you are at your most ordinary, tell someone you trust, and then do it.

If you have tried and you are still worn out

There are two common reasons.

First, setting down the waiting once and assuming it is done. With family, the waiting tends to grow back, especially after an unexpected kindness — your mother says something warm one week, and the next week you press call carrying a whole armful of hope again. That is not failure. It is normal when you still love someone. Each time you notice it growing back, repeat the silent question before the call, no need to blame yourself.

Second, doing only the inside part and skipping the outside part, or the reverse. Stop keeping watch but never raise the real work issue, and the scoreboard comes back. State your boundaries but keep the waiting intact, and every time the other person stays the same, you are let down again. Usually it takes both, a little of each.

And if the exhaustion lasts for weeks, affects your sleep, your eating or your work, or you start feeling you do not want to do anything at all, that is the time to talk with a trained professional. Not because you are weak. Because there are things a piece of writing cannot hold up.

This Sunday night, the phone may still light up at seven. The first line may still be the same.

You just do not have to stand waiting on this end of the line any more.

This article was created with AI assistance.