Can you remember when you first became “the responsible one”? Most women can’t - because there wasn’t one singular moment when they shifted from being cared for to being counted on.

The internet calls it “eldest daughter syndrome”. I call it what happens when a little girl becomes her family’s emotional shock absorber.

It’s 2:14AM and your phone screen is burning holes in your face. You’ve got 17 tabs open, and none of them are helping. Why not? Because you’re not actually looking for an answer. You’re looking for relief. From the guilt. From the grief. From the whiplash of feeling one thing in the morning and the opposite by dinner.

When she first came to see me, Brooke didn’t talk about grief or loneliness - she talked about logistics. She told me she had a good partner, a stable relationship. No real fights. No red flags. “We get along,” she said, in a way that sounded like both a celebration and a resignation. And then one day, a month or two in, she told me a story that changed everything.

You tell yourself you’re confused. That if you could just figure it out—run the numbers, weigh the options, script the perfect conversation where no one gets hurt—you’d finally land on clarity. But if we’re being honest? You already have clarity. You’re just scared shitless of what it means.

You knew marriage would be work. You expected hard conversations. “Compromise”. The constant recalibration that happens when two adults are learning how to stay connected while managing groceries, gut health, and generational trauma - never mind dodging Legos. You even braced for seasons of disconnection—because you’re realistic like that.

But what you’re feeling now? The second-guessing, over-analyzing, and soul-numbing depletion? You didn’t see that coming - and you shouldn’t have.

Some women leave their marriage and exhale for the first time in years. The weight lifts. They feel lighter, freer—like they finally have their life back. But others leave and still feel stuck. Just as exhausted. Just as resentful. Just as unsure of themselves as they were before they walked away.

And you?

You know you should set boundaries. The internet won’t shut up about it.

But every time you try, some part of you shrinks, like you just committed a felony.

You think about divorce a lot for someone who likes being married.

“I shouldn’t feel so unhappy and irritable all the time,” you tell yourself, “and I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about leaving so much - I love my family.”

You don’t know this yet - but the thought of packing your bags isn’t about wanting to leave him; it’s about escaping the accumulating pressure inside, the relentless cycle of the same unresolved arguments.

Your fear of conflict and the avoidance strategy you’ve adopted in response is eroding the foundations of your relationships because you - the real you - she isn’t in those relationships anymore.

It’s not your fault - you were likely pre-dispositioned and then conditioned to be conflict-avoidant by nature. The fact that you live in 2024 just has you doubling down on it.

Here’s what to do about it.