I am a senior economics major and one of the first things they taught me in my intro level microeconomics class was sunk costs. In economics, sunk costs are HUGE. In short, there is a prevailing idea that anything you have invested up until this point is gone.

You will not get it back. Whether that be resources, energy, time, whatever you have invested into any project up until this point, is gone.

For example, if you buy a skirt for $30 and the store does not accept returns, that $30 is considered a sunk cost. You never want to continue to waste more of your resources when you know the outcome will not be what you want.

If your favorite place to get your nails done suddenly turns horrible (all the new employees always mess up your nails) you aren’t going to continue going there. All of the money you have spent at that salon getting your nails done over the years is a sunk cost.

When you get into a relationship, whether it be three months or three decades long, you are going to invest a large amount of time and energy into that relationship. When things start to go south in that relationship, you are going to start thinking about everything that you have put into that relationship up until this point.

The number one reason I hear people won’t leave their partners for is that they’ve “already invested this much time into it and don’t want it to go to waste.”

Let me tell you why that is utterly wrong and so completely absurd. When you realize you are in a crappy relationship, staying because you’ve already invested a certain amount of time into it is a horrible idea. If you’re not happy, why are you sticking around?

Whether it takes a week or a year, eventually that relationship is going to end and you are going to have wasted more energy and time into it at that point. Why not just get out now and save yourself the time?

I understand that some people want to try and make it work, but there are times when you need to simply cut your losses and leave. Don’t find yourself in a horrible five year relationship refusing to leave because you’ve already spent that much time into it at this point.Just because you've spent X amount of time in a relationship up until now shouldn't mean that you c