There’s a reason why so many people swear by journaling. As we experience emotionally challenging moments in our lives, we need to find an appropriate coping mechanism. However, while the art of journaling is a practice that people uplift and admire, the art of the pros and cons list tends to be met with controversy.
When it comes to deciding things as emotionally charged as whether or not to stay with someone we’re seeing, many see a pros and cons list as eerily simple. It feels weird to boil down another human being to just bullet points on either side of a line, deciding their value based on seemingly arbitrary metrics. But maybe it’s actually not like that.
Forks in the road are scary. Will I stay with them? Will I end it? Decisions about love are particularly heavy but also, ironically, lonely. While our friends and family do tend to have valuable opinions, the truth is that they can’t and won’t ever have all of the information to weigh up the options completely. It’s up to us, by ourselves in those final moments. With an important choice ahead and only our thoughts to rely on, breaking down the situation to its most simple underlying questions is the only course of action. This is where the pros and cons list comes in.
The way I see it, a pros and cons list is the most accessible form of journaling. At its core, the list allows us to begin the process of untangling the messy string of thoughts in our head; we can put everything down in front of us and evaluate the situation from the bigger picture. Understanding a pros and cons list from this perspective makes it less about boiling someone down to words and more about understanding our own experience. We are better able to make a decision because we can first filter out the thoughts that don’t serve us while understanding the ones that do. It’s in our interest and the interest of the other person that we proceed in a direction that will make us happy and healthy, a process that is helped by a pros and cons list.
However, there is one key caveat to the pros and cons list: while the decision-making process can start with a list, it shouldn’t end there. Once the original mess of thoughts is organised, we should use the list as a starting point for further thought, comforted by the fact that it took some of the fear and confusion out of the picture.
Romance is rarely as easy as a rom-com, and sometimes we need some help figuring it out. When it comes to decisions about love, breaking down the situation is the first step to better understanding our own experiences. Usually, that means starting with a list, and that’s okay.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash.